Red wave threatening 3 Western Pennsylvania state lawmakers

Joe Biden’s narrow victory in Pennsylvania may be overshadowing a red wave in Southwestern Pennsylvania threatening to wash away three Democrats with more than 60 years’ combined experience in the General Assembly.

Preliminary returns showed the last resident Democrat in the Westmoreland County legislative caucus, state Rep. Joe Petrarca, a 13-term lawmaker, lost to Jason Silvis, a film stuntman and first-time legislative candidate, by 1,445 votes. Both men are from Washington Township in Westmoreland County. The district largely is in Westmoreland County and includes small slices of Armstrong and Indiana counties.

Two other Democrats whose legislative districts include portions of Westmoreland and Allegheny County also were losing their reelection bids as the final votes were counted. State House Minority Leader Frank Dermody, D-Oakmont, who has held his seat since 1991, was losing to Republican challenger Carrie DelRosso of Oakmont by 923 votes. State Sen. Jim Brewster of McKeesport, a 10-year veteran of the Senate, was down 410 votes to GOP challenger Nicole Ziccarelli of Lower Burrell.

The three are among a number of down-ballot Democrats — including state Sen. Pam Iovino, D-Mt. Lebanon, and state Treasurer Joe Torsella — who were shown the door, even as President-elect Joe Biden claimed victory in Pennsylvania.

Dermody, Petrarca and Brewster were notable for their long tenure in office, but there were hints they might face serious challenges this year. In a rare departure for legislative campaigns in Southwestern Pennsylvania, the three Democrats faced an early onslaught of negative television ads early in the campaign season.

Republican Party leaders say the three districts were part of a statewide strategy that acknowledges the changing political geography of Pennsylvania. The so-called “collar counties” that surround Philadelphia have flipped from Republican strongholds to areas that are consistently electing Democrats. Meanwhile Southwestern Pennsylvania, with the exception of Allegheny County, has been trending more Republican with each passing year.

Scott Avolio, a Greensburg lawyer and member of the GOP State Committee, said the decision to focus on state lawmakers deemed vulnerable in the region was pragmatic.

“The party looked at things and knew they were going to continue to lose seats in the East … so it just made sense to focus resources in the West,” he said. “There are resources coming from Harrisburg that we may have not seen before.”

Ziccarelli was an obvious beneficiary of that decision. The 39-year-0ld Lower Burrell lawyer ran a vigorous campaign against the 72-year-old incumbent, a retired banker who has been a fixture in state and local politics since his election to McKeesport city council 25 years ago.

It was a well-financed campaign.

The Friends of Nicole Ziccarelli Committee reported $120,000 on hand Sept. 15 and more than $740,000 in contributions between that date and Oct. 19. Of that total, $688,750 came from political committees, including more than $430,000 from various Republican Senate campaign committees. Brewster’s campaign, by contrast, had $400,000 at the start of that period, but reported a total of only $121,900 in contributions during that month as his campaign headed into the final stretch.

Campaign finance reports from that same period indicate Dermody, 69, managed to out-raise DelRosso, a 45-year-old communications consultant. But the House Democratic leader was unable to hang on at the polls after a bruising campaign during which DelRosso racked up support from the unions representing laborers, operating engineers and boilermakers.

Petrarca, 59, likewise reported raising out-raising his Republican opponent. Silvis, 45, reported no campaign contributions and $1,700 in debt from a low-key campaign in the rural district.

It may be no coincidence that Petrarca, Brewster and Dermody all represent parts of Westmoreland County. The county of 350,000 has been the epicenter of the state’s changing political geography.

Westmoreland Democrats, who held a registration edge for more than half a century, had been voting for Republican presidential candidates for two decades and had helped elect a growing number of GOP candidates at the state, county and municipal level by the time the GOP claimed a registration edge in 2019.

Former U.S. Rep. Ron Klink is a Murrysville Democrat who represented the region in Congress for eight years before losing a bid for U.S. Senate and becoming a lobbyist. He still has trouble processing how Republicans took charge in Westmoreland County.

“I was stunned when that happened. When I moved here in 1971, the margin was 2½ to 1 for Democrats,” Klink said.

Political observers speculate that the demise of heavy industry along with a shrinking number of union households and an aging population all played a role in the change in a region that always identified as socially conservative.

Lowman Henry, a Westmoreland County native who directs the Lincoln Institute for Public Opinion Research, a conservative public policy organization in Dauphin County, said the region was an obvious target for the GOP.

“Western Pennsylvania has been a growth area for Republicans for a number of cycles now,” Henry said.

While targeting longtime lawmakers in the region seemed obvious, Petrarca’s apparent defeat came as something of a surprise even to Republicans.

The soft-spoken lawmaker, whose district runs from Vandergrift to Derry in Westmoreland County and takes in a small corner of Armstrong County, is considered among the most conservative Democrats in the region. He was known to cross the aisle and stand with Republicans from time to time, an increasingly rare phenomenon in the state’s highly polarized legislature.

“Joe Petrarca’s district has always been identified as much more of a Republican district, but with Joe’s conservative voting record, likeability and family name, we haven’t been able to pick it up in the past,” Avolio said.