Nobody won Pa. Democrats’ endorsement in the Senate race — but almost everybody declared victory
Conor Lamb had the most votes. No one got the endorsement. Still, we heard a lot of victory talk.
We’re not math geniuses here at Clout, but we can calculate two-thirds. That’s the threshold a candidate had to meet at a Pennsylvania Democratic State Committee meeting Saturday to get endorsed by the party.
No one got there. Still, we heard a lot of victory talk.
U.S. Rep. Conor Lamb has the most mathematical reason to claim the win: He got more than 60% of the vote for his Senate campaign, short what he needed for an endorsement but more than double the second- and third-place finishers, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman and State Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta.
The other campaigns have pointed to the crowd the candidates were there to woo — about 300 heavily engaged, elected party committee people — as Lamb’s kind of room and his endorsement to lose. And lose, he did.
As did everyone seeking the endorsement.
» READ MORE: We're tracking the candidates running for Senate in Pennsylvania
Lamb campaigned hard for the vote, sending mailers to committee members and personally calling many of them.
That, his opponents argue, makes Lamb the loser and everybody else a winner, since no endorsement means less influence in the key final months before the May primary.
Kenyatta’s team saw his third-place finish and ability to make it past the first ballot (which Montgomery County Commissioner Val Arkoosh did not) as a win for him.
Arkoosh’s campaign has said the opinions of 300 people in a ballroom, especially without an endorsement following it, are unlikely to have any major baring on the campaign and thus leaves her largely where she was in the race — still struggling to gain traction.
Clout’s calculation: Spinning a loss into a victory just brings more attention to a shot taken and missed.
Clout provides often irreverent news and analysis about people, power, and politics.