Headed into this week, Pennsylvania’s state House was evenly divided, with each major party holding 101 seats. With this in mind, a special election just outside of Pittsburgh drew quite a bit of attention, since it would tip the scales.
The result wasn’t especially close: Democrat Dan Goughnour — a retired police officer, Teamster and local school board member — easily prevailed, restoring the party’s narrow majority in the state legislative chamber.
But it was the results of the other special election in the Keystone State that will raise eyebrows far outside Pennsylvania. The Hill reported:
Democrat James Malone has won an open Pennsylvania state Senate seat in a major upset in a district that comfortably voted for President Trump in November, Decision Desk HQ projects. Malone, the mayor of East Petersburg, is projected to defeat Republican Lancaster County Commissioner Josh Parsons to represent Senate District 36 for the remainder of former state Sen. Ryan Aument’s (R) term.
Anytime a party manages to flip a district, it tends to generate some attention, but the closer one looks at this contest, the more dramatic the results appear: This is a district that Donald Trump carried by 15 points last fall.
What’s more, as an analysis in The Downballot noted, “Since taking its present form in Lancaster County 40 years ago, the district has always been held by the GOP, and the county as a whole has gone for a Democrat at the presidential level just once since 1856 (Lyndon Johnson just barely won it in 1964).”
This is not, in other words, a district where a Democrat is supposed to be competitive. And yet Malone prevailed by running on a notable platform. From The Downballot’s analysis: “Malone focused his message heavily on education and cuts to the federal government that he’s had to deal with as mayor of a small town, specifically calling out Musk for slashing ‘benefits for veterans, retirees, and students.’”
These results come just eight weeks after a Democrat in Minnesota won a state legislative special election, giving the party a majority in the state Senate, which coincided with a state Senate special election in Iowa in which Democrat Mike Zimmer narrowly defeated his Republican rival.
The Iowa race generated some national coverage because of the broader circumstances: This special election was held in a district thought to be a GOP stronghold. Indeed, Trump won this district by 21 points. Then a Democratic candidate managed to flip the state Senate seat from red to blue anyway.
The Iowa and Minnesota contests came on the heels of a couple of closely watched state legislative special elections in Virginia, held a few weeks earlier, which Democrats also won. The contests were, as an NBC News report put it, “an early test of the political environment.”
To be sure, the news comes with some rather large caveats. Legislative special elections tend to be low-turnout affairs, and drawing sweeping conclusions about the meaning of their outcomes is unwise. That said, in the aftermath of Election Day 2024, the conventional wisdom suggested not only that Republicans had entered an era of electoral dominance, but also that Democratic voters were demoralized, disheartened and prepared to withdraw from civic life for a while. So it’s notable that the party has put together some victories, undermining some of the assumptions from November. The conventional wisdom will be put to the test again in just six days, with a closely watched state Supreme Court race in Wisconsin and two congressional special elections in Florida on tap for April 1. Watch this space. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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