Democrats maintain narrow majority in Pennsylvania state House amid red wave

Democrats will narrowly maintain control of the Pennsylvania state House — one of the only bright spots for the party after a red wave led by President-elect Donald Trump’s election successes ushered in GOP wins down the ballot.

House Democrats will again control the chamber with a 102-101 majority, after all incumbents running for reelection on Tuesday won. House Democrats believe they held onto their narrow majority — while Dems higher on the ticket failed — because they focused on hyper-local issues and successfully communicated their legislative wins.

Meanwhile, House Republicans will shake up their leadership in response to their failure to flip the chamber, with Minority Leader Bryan Cutler announcing he would not run for leadership elections next week, according to a letter sent to his colleagues Friday afternoon.

The Associated Press called the final state House race and declared that Democrats would hold onto their majority on Friday morning, after ballot issues in Cambria County delayed results.

House Speaker Joanna McClinton (D., Philadelphia), the first woman to ever hold the role, said House Democrats’ success in such a tough election is a “testament to [Democrats’] delivery of constituent services” and their reputations in solving residents’ problems.

“It was a tough week. It was a very tough week, and with every democratic process, there‘s a winner and a loser,” said McClinton. “I’m very excited to be able to return to Harrisburg knowing there are 101 additional Democrats coming with me.”

Democrats surprised the state in 2022 when they flipped the state House for the first time in 12 years with a narrow majority. Officials expected the state’s new redistricted maps, which gave Republicans a slight edge over Democrats, to make races more competitive, but didn’t expect Democrats to flip the chamber so soon.

In the end in this election, however, Democrats’ majority came down to Rep. Frank Burns (D., Cambria), who was reelected to a ninth term to represent Johnstown in his reddening county 80 miles east of Pittsburgh. He is the last of the Blue Dog Democrats in the state House, is antiabortion and pro-Second Amendment, and often blocked social-issue bills or required Democrats to find Republicans in the collar counties who would support them.

Burns ran a Trump-style campaign himself, including attack ads that claimed his GOP opponent wanted to bring in 100 Afghan families into Johnstown and give them jobs held by locals, spend more on public housing, and thus make the community less safe — a mirror to Trump’s anti-immigrant and anti-refugee rhetoric.

Burns remains a welcome and supported member of the Democratic caucus, said House Majority Leader Matt Bradford (D., Montgomery).

“He fiercely fights just for Cambria County and we would ask him nothing else but to do that,” Bradford said. “Pennsylvania and our caucus is lucky to have him.”

Burns and other Democrats across Pennsylvania were able to win — despite voters rejecting Democrats everywhere else on the ballot — because they were able to separate themselves from the national narrative, said Joe Corrigan, a Democratic strategist who works with House Democrats.

State House Democrats emphasized constituent services and their efforts in their own communities, whether it be by securing grant funding or hosting surprisingly popular events for people to shred their sensitive documents, Corrigan added. And each Democratic member has their own personal brand they can run on, besides their party affiliation.

“Would Philadelphia vote for someone with the profile of Frank Burns? Probably not in a primary,” Corrigan added. “But he fits his district.”

The Democratic failures at the top of the ticket will help House Democrats’ calculus on how they approach their jobs this year, leaders said.

Bradford said despite his and others’ opposition to Trump, he believes leaders need to continue to focus on the issues constituents are most concerned with, such as affordability. Democrats will come into session next year ready to “double down on bipartisanship and pragmatism,” he added.

“The Democratic Party has to be a very big tent, and this week was a great reminder of that,” Bradford said.

McClinton said her party will need to revisit those who voted for Democrats in 2020 and 2022, but who voted for Republicans this election to understand “why they are no longer with us” and “work very hard to earn their support in the future.”

House Democrats currently control the lower chamber by only one vote, and at times have had to lean on moderate Republicans from Bucks County to pass bills when they couldn’t get their whole membership to support them. Lawmaking halted on multiple occasions throughout the two-year legislative session because of more than a half-dozen resignations that put Democrats under their numeric majority.

Only about 10 races statewide were competitive in this year’s election. Republicans targeted seats held by vulnerable Democrats in other parts of the state that are leaning redder, such as Burns, who held onto his seat by approximately 1,000 votes in a county that Trump won by 35 percentage points.

Meanwhile, Democrats had hoped to pick up some of the few remaining GOP-held seats in the collar counties — like Rep. Craig Williams’ seat as the last Republican representing parts of Delaware County or two Lower Bucks seats represented by Republican Reps. K.C. Tomlinson and Joe Hogan — as ones they thought they could flip to maintain and expand their narrow majority. Williams, Tomlinson and Hogan all won reelection, but Bradford said he believes these seats and others across the state are still winnable in future elections where Trump is not at the top of the ticket.

Republicans also had their eyes on several seats across the state that they thought they could flip, including Rep. Brian Munroe (D., Bucks). House Republicans and a political action committee backed by Jeff Yass, Pennsylvania’s richest man, poured more than $600,000 in ads in support of GOP-challenger Dan McPhillips. Munroe ultimately won reelection by a small margin, and Republicans were unable to win back their majority.

Cutler, a Republican from Lancaster County who previously served as House speaker and caucus leader, noted in his Friday letter that national GOP support was not enough and that leaders “fell short.”

“I strongly believe we have to make changes from the top down to ensure our future success, and for that reason I will not be seeking the position of Republican Leader for the upcoming Session,” Cutler wrote.

At least three GOP members are seeking the nomination to be the next Republican minority leader, including Reps. Jesse Topper (R., Bedford), Josh Kail (R., Washington) and Milou Mackenzie (R., Northampton), according to a source familiar with the leadership elections.

Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, spent $1 million to help his party retain and expand its state House majority, made 20 endorsements, and campaigned across the state in districts Democrats hoped to flip or to protect vulnerable incumbents.

In his endorsements earlier this fall, Shapiro noted the Democratic priorities he and the slim Democratic majority in the state House — in concert with the GOP-controlled state Senate — had been able to pass, including an increased property tax and rent rebate for seniors, an expanded child care tax credit, and major investments in public education to respond to a court order requiring officials to create a new school funding system.

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“The Governor fought to protect the House Democratic majority, and he looks forward to continuing to work with leaders in both parties to get stuff done for all Pennsylvanians,” said Manuel Bonder, Shapiro’s press secretary, in a statement.

In recent years, Democrats have dominated the fast-growing collar counties around Philadelphia, electing Democrats to 31 of the 39 districts in Bucks, Montgomery, Delaware and Chester Counties.

Bucks remains an outlier in the increasingly blue Philadelphia suburbs, as the only collar county with a GOP voter registration advantage. For this reason, many of the competitive House races are in Bucks County, and Republicans represent more districts in Bucks than in any other collar county.

Staff writer Anna Orso contributed to this article.