Tom Smith has the money to run campaign ads statewide and potentially be competitive against Bob Casey, Jr., which is more than you can say about the others. He was probably our best bet in a weak field.
I don’t have much of an opinion on the redrawn PA-04; maybe Reilly was more conservative than Perry, but from what I’ve read about Perry he seems solid enough, and will definitely be a more consistently conservative vote than Todd Platts.
As for the Altmire-Critz showdown in the redrawn PA-12—wow! I didn’t think Critz would stand a chance; this primary seemed to me like the Buyer-Kern primary in IN in 2002, in which the freshman Kern got trounced by Buyer, but I guess that Altmire was too “moderate” for Big Labor. Critz’s victory gives the GOP nominee, Keith Rothfus (who came very close to beating Altmire in 2010), an excellent chance of winning the general in this GOP leaning CD, since Critz is unknown in the more populous Allegheny and Lawrence areas and what sells in Johnstown won’t work in the central and western parts of the district.
In the PA-17, I would not have believed the result had I not read a column this morning predicting Holden’s defeat. Serves Holden right for staying a Democrat as the party kept going further left; had he switched to the GOP back in 2004 or so, he would still be in Congress (and Republicans could have packed even more Democrats into the PA-17 by taking out Schuylkill County and putting in Dem parts of Allentown and Bethlehem).
I take it that Tim Murphy won handily over his young conservative challenger (Feinberg?) in PA-18. I don’t think that Murphy is that bad, but that wasn’t exactly a victory for conservatism.
In summary, the GOP now has a good chance of ending up with a 13-5 GOP House delegation (two years ago, the Dems held a 12-7 edge, meaning we would have gained 6 seats and the Dems would have lost 7). And the Senate race is an uphill, but not impossible, battle for Tom” mSmith.
John Fund agrees with me regarding Rothfus’s chances against Crtiz in November:
In the Pittsburgh suburbs, labor did better by winning a grudge match against Representative Jason Altmire, a key Blue Dog Democrat. Union leaders were furious at Altmire over his vote against Obamacare, claiming he had promised them he be vote for it before reneging in the end and opposing it.
Alleghany County Labor Council head Jack Shea put it bluntly: “He told a roomful of 60 labor leaders that at the end of the day, the last version of whatever the House bill was going to be, he would be there.”
As a result, the unions went all out for Representative Mark Critz, a former aide to the late Representative John Murtha, who was thrown into the same seat as Altmire through redistricting. Critz wasn’t yet in office when Obamacare passed in March 2010, and has expressed disapproval of much of the bill. But on the campaign trail he pounded away at Altmire’s vote for a Republican balanced-budget amendment, saying it would savage Social Security and Medicare.
In the end, the race came down to turnout and regional loyalty. Critz had only represented 27 percent of the new seat’s voters, but union workers made 36,000 phone calls and cranked up turnout so that 40 percent of the primary vote came from Critz areas. That mattered. Critz won an astonishing 90 percent of the vote in his home turf, managing to beat Altmire by two points.
But his success may be short-lived. The new congressional district actually tilts Republican, having given John McCain 54 percent of the vote in 2008. Republican nominee Keith Rothfus has more money in the bank than Critz does after the draining Democratic donnybrook, and Rothfus came within only a single point of defeating Altmire in 2010.
Look for a hotly contested liberal vs. conservative race this fall, but I’d give the edge to Rothfus, who will have both a united party and favorable demographics in his corner.
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/296949/liberals-unseat-moderate-democrats-pa-primary-john-fund