Wednesday, May 19, 2010
A great night in Pennsylvania...
Joe Sestak's drubbing of Arlen Specter is obviously the headline-grabber, but a special election to replace the late John Murtha in the Keystone State's 12th district has a more immediate, and possibly foreboding impact for the Republican party heading into the November elections.
Democrat Mark Critz beat the crap out of Republican Tim Burns by a fairly surprising 8 points, 53-45. This is a seat that the national Republican party was absolutely salivating over, but in the end the Democrat triumphed fairly easily in a district that John McCain carried in 2008.
Former GOP Rep. Tom Davis says it pretty well:
"If you can't win a seat that is trending Republican in a year like this, then where is the wave?" asked Mr. Davis, who said Republicans will need to examine what went wrong. "It would be a huge upset not to win this seat."Where's the wave, GOPers?
UPDATE: Here's an interesting point about special Congressional elections during the Obama presidency...
For those keeping score, there have been seven special elections for U.S. House seats since the president's inauguration 16 months ago: NY-20, IL-5, CA-32, CA-10, NY-23, FL-19, and PA-12. Democrats have won all seven.
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