Conor Lamb declares victory in PA-18 as seething Republicans mull election challenge

“We’re going to win so much, you’re going to be so sick and tired of win­ning. You’re going to come to me and go ‘Please, please, we can’t win any­more.’”

– Don­ald Trump (May 26th, 2016)

Bar­ring a recount that pro­duces a dif­fer­ent out­come, young Demo­c­ra­t­ic con­gres­sion­al hope­ful Conor Lamb has eked out a nar­row vic­to­ry over Repub­li­can oppo­nent Rick Sac­cone in Penn­syl­va­ni­a’s Trump-friend­ly 18th Con­gres­sion­al Dis­trict, con­found­ing Repub­li­cans and delight­ing Democ­rats across the country.

With 100% of precincts report­ing, these are the results:

• Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­date Conor Lamb: 49.84% (113,813 votes)
• Repub­li­can can­di­date Rick Sac­cone: 49.56% (113,186 votes)
• Lib­er­tar­i­an can­di­date Drew Gray Miller: 0.6% (1,397 votes)

Lam­b’s vic­to­ry is the sec­ond con­sec­u­tive promi­nent loss for Don­ald Trump and the Repub­li­cans, fol­low­ing Roy Moore’s defeat in Alaba­ma last December.

Pun­dits of all stripes are call­ing it an omi­nous devel­op­ment for Repub­li­cans, who have already lost scores of leg­isla­tive seats in spe­cial elec­tions around the country.

“We should be able to elect a box of ham­mers in this dis­trict. If we’re los­ing here, you can bet there is a Demo­c­ra­t­ic wave coming.”

– Repub­li­can con­sul­tant Mike Murphy

Lamb was able to win by har­ness­ing the pow­er of a new­ly resur­gent Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty while appeal­ing to bicon­cep­tu­als by sim­ply being him­self. Trust and authen­tic­i­ty are what real­ly win elec­tions, and Lamb has it in spades.

Just watch his elec­tion night vic­to­ry speech.

There is a belief among some that vot­ers judge can­di­dates based on their issue posi­tions, and so to win in a con­ser­v­a­tive dis­trict, a Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­date needs to have con­ser­v­a­tive issue posi­tions (or at least some) in order to win. But that is non­sense. Peo­ple do not vote for can­di­dates mere­ly based on what posi­tions they take on the issues; rather, they vote for who they iden­ti­fy with.

Research has borne this out, but old myths die hard.

Lamb did not need to run to the mid­dle to win — he sim­ply need­ed to be him­self and say what he real­ly believed. And that is what he did in his campaign.

Don­ald Trump sug­gest­ed at a pri­vate fundrais­er that Lamb was able to win because Lamb was like him — for tax cuts and irre­spon­si­ble gun laws and so forth. (Trump, of course, makes every­thing about him­self.) In an audio record­ing, Trump can be heard remark­ing: “I said, ‘Is he a Repub­li­can? He sounds like a Repub­li­can to me.’”

But that is com­plete rub­bish. To be more spe­cif­ic, it’s post-elec­tion spin that is at odds with what Trump and his cho­rus were say­ing about Lamb before Tuesday.

Again, if you lis­ten to Lam­b’s speech, you’ll hear him talk about pro­tect­ing Social Secu­ri­ty and Medicare and the rights of work­ing peo­ple. Lamb is staunch­ly pro-labor, and he made sure to rec­og­nize and thank the unions and their mem­bers who sup­port­ed him while onstage. Those just aren’t things that a Repub­li­can says.

In real­i­ty, Lamb is a strong Demo­c­rat — as he said, a Franklin Delano Roo­sevelt Demo­c­rat — and his can­di­da­cy res­onat­ed with many vot­ers in west­ern Penn­syl­va­nia for that rea­son. It is said that the num­ber one rule in pol­i­tics is don’t alien­ate your base. Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates often vio­late this rule, but Conor Lamb man­aged to avoid that mis­take. He got his base fired up and moti­vat­ed to turn out.

He also impressed vot­ers with the qual­i­ty of the cam­paign he ran. The New York Times sent a reporter to Penn­syl­va­nia to prac­tice shoe-leather jour­nal­ism, and pub­lished a nice sto­ry full of quotes from peo­ple who actu­al­ly live in or near the dis­trict as opposed to self-pro­mot­ing pun­dits from far away.

Here are the most strik­ing quotes from that story:

“You have to give cred­it… He was clear­ly the best can­di­date they’ve run for this dis­trict. And not only the best can­di­date but he exe­cut­ed a strong campaign.”

– Mike DeVan­ney, local Repub­li­can polit­i­cal consultant

“I saw him at the fish fry at Our Lady of Grace… He just seems to bring a fresh perspective.”

– Vot­er Clare Rex

“I saw Lamb, Lamb, Lamb.”

– Sac­cone sup­port­er Chris­tine Sorbara

Although the final results show Lamb in the lead, Repub­li­cans have sig­naled they will chal­lenge the results based on “irreg­u­lar­i­ties”, which is rich indeed con­sid­er­ing how they have brushed aside Demo­c­ra­t­ic com­plaints about elec­tion integri­ty when the results have shown their can­di­dates ahead.

One of the Repub­li­cans’ com­plaints is that their attor­ney was­n’t allowed to observe the vote count­ing in Lam­b’s strong­hold of Alleghe­ny County.

The Pitts­burgh Post-Gazette dis­sect­ed this com­plaint at length, not­ing:

Coun­ty spokes­woman Amie Downs said that on Elec­tion Day there had been dis­cus­sions with Repub­li­can attor­neys about their abil­i­ty to over­see the vote-count­ing process. Under the state Elec­tion Code, she said, such observers must have a signed autho­riza­tion from the chair of the coun­ty com­mit­tee. “They did­n’t pro­duce that until the very end of the evening, when the bal­lots had already been scanned,” she said.

Mark Wolosik, who directs the coun­ty’s elec­tions office, said that late Tues­day morn­ing, “a call came in ask­ing about peo­ple being able to observe the [count­ing] process on Elec­tion Night.” Usu­al­ly, he said, “peo­ple ask ahead of time” rather than on Elec­tion Day itself.

Phone mes­sages were exchanged over the fol­low­ing hours, and even­tu­al­ly two Repub­li­can attor­neys arrived at the cen­tral tab­u­la­tion cen­ter, locat­ed in Pittsburgh.

Mr. Wolosik said that an attor­ney iden­ti­fied him­self as being “from the Sac­cone cam­paign,” but the Elec­tion Code only allows polit­i­cal par­ties, not can­di­dates, to dep­u­tize observers. A lawyer lat­er pro­duced an email pur­port­ing to show such autho­riza­tion, but Mr. Wolosik said he could­n’t accept that because “there was no sig­na­ture.” He swore in the observ­er after receiv­ing a signed authorization.

It sounds to us like the author­i­ties fol­lowed the law and treat­ed the Repub­li­cans fair­ly. If the par­ty want­ed observers in place from the get-go, it should have been more pre­pared. It is quite evi­dent Repub­li­cans were caught off guard by last night’s results. They had expect­ed Lamb to win Alleghe­ny Coun­ty, but they thought Sac­cone would over­take Lamb when the more con­ser­v­a­tive coun­ties reported.

When that did not hap­pen, they put their faith in the absen­tee bal­lots. Cable news out­lets report­ed the White House and local Repub­li­cans were opti­mistic about the absen­tee bal­lots break­ing in Sac­cone’s favor. But the absen­tee bal­lots enhanced Lam­b’s posi­tion, pre­serv­ing his slim lead and leav­ing Repub­li­cans angry.

Penn­syl­va­ni­a’s 18th Dis­trict will soon have new bound­aries thanks to court-ordered redis­trict­ing, so this spe­cial elec­tion will be the final event in the his­to­ry of this juris­dic­tion. But we would­n’t be sur­prised if Conor Lamb remains a part of Penn­syl­va­ni­a’s con­gres­sion­al del­e­ga­tion for years to come.