PA-SD-37 is the biggest legislative race of the day by far.
At stake is an R+4 seat covering most of the middle- to upper-middle-class suburban South Hills region in suburban Pittsburgh, making a crescent from Sewickley in the west to Mt. Lebanon and Jefferson in the south. 2012 nominee, ex-Mt. Lebanon councilman, and local GOP official Raja (R) is making a second bid for this seat.
An Indian immigrant, Raja (who does not use his first name)
has a very interesting story of building a software company from scratch. He is an establishment conservative with some minor upscale moderate tendencies. However, he has been hit for outsourcing and suing employees in business disputes, which led him to underperform in his run seven years ago. Raja is facing former congressional candidate and Bush 43 Admin official Pam Iovino (D). Iovino has an interesting biography as a career Naval officer who later served in a high-level VA post under W. She has also held veterans’ affairs positions in state and Allegheny county government. Iovinio is running as an establishment liberal, and has been hit by Raja for some issue stances that are a bit left of the district’s sensibilities, particularly on abortion. The leftward trend in this area and Raja’s weakness as a candidate would seem to make Iovino a marginal favorite to flip the seat, though overall the race is still quite competitive.
The numbers of liberals in the military has always surprised me. There was a retired Navy Captain I used to work with was a card-carrying member of the Socialist Party. (Really its true! He showed me his membership card. At the time I didn’t think they still existed!)
I asked another conservative career officer friend colleague why this seemed to be. His reply was on a superficial level the military is how socialists\liberals would like to see society operate. Minimal societal caste, they would explain away the officer\enlisted caste as like party official(management)\worker. Also to this “military socialist thinker” things (equipment, goods, supplies) “appear” for them to use. They don’t ask or care to understand how it got there.
Well that’s his explanation! I think there is some truth in it.