There were two legislative special elections in Pennsylvania Tuesday. Democrats won both. The more important one would determine which part would control the state House but it was kind of in the bag since it is a deep blue district. The other one turned out to be a stunner— a long-shot in a deep (like really deep) red district (R+23) that no one expected Democrat James Malone to win. But he did, beating an apex Republican in Lancaster County. Although the county narrowly voted for LBJ in 1964, before that, the last Democratic presidential candidate to win the county was local resident James Buchanan in 1856. Last year, Trump beat Kamala 57.2% to 41.3%.
The Mon Valley (southeast of Pittsburgh) House district where Dan Goughnour, a McKeesport police officer and school board member, beat Republican Chuck Davis was open because of the death of Democrat Matthew Gergely in January, had left the House with a 101 to 101 tie. Gergely first won the seat in a 2023 special election with 75% of the vote and the GOP didn’t run a candidate against him last year. Kamala carried the district with about 58% of the vote compared to 42% for Señor Trumpanzyy.
The Lancaster County race pitted Malone, the mayor of a small town, East Petersburg (pop-4,500), against Josh Parsons, a county commissioner. The flip is huge— though it doesn’t challenge GOP control of the state Senate. It does, however, challenge GOP control of half the seats they hold in the country. The seat was open because state Sen Ryan Aument took a job working for US Sen. David McCormack. Last time Aument ran, the Democrats didn’t even bother running an opponent.
DNC Chair Ken Martin’s statement should be worrying Republicans everywhere: “Congratulations to Senator-elect James Malone on his shocking, historic special election victory in Senate District 36. In a district that went to Trump by 15 in 2024 and has a 23-point Republican voter registration advantage, Malone’s victory is a loud and clear rebuke to Republicans’ threats to the programs Pennsylvania families rely on— from Social Security and Medicaid to our public schools. To protect working Americans, Democrats like Senator-elect Malone are competing everywhere, and in special elections throughout the country, we continue to overperform as voters join us in fighting back against the Trump-Musk agenda. This is a shockwave to the system and the way Republicans have run our government. Republicans everywhere should be afraid.”
His office pointed out that “Democrats continue to win elections and overperform Republicans in 2025. Before tonight, in 11 of the 12 special elections this year, Democrats have over-performed the top of the 2024 ticket. Earlier this year, Democrats maintained control of the Virginia House of Delegates and Virginia Senate. In Iowa, Democrat Mike Zimmer flipped a district Trump won by 21 points, over-performing the top of the November ticket by 14 points while Democrat Nannette Griffin over-performed by 24 points. In March, Minnesota Dems held the Minnesota Senate and won a House seat. The best barometer we have of voters’ feelings of the Trump-Musk administration is how they actually vote. Special elections so far in 2025 indicate that voters are fed up and already looking for change. The next critical elections are in Wisconsin and Florida next week and the DNC is all hands on deck to build infrastructure everywhere we can.”
What a shame the multimillionaire, vision-free lug who runs the DCCC, Suzan DelBene, doesn’t get any of this and refuses to be part of the team and do anything about the Florida race except whisper to the media that it’s not winnable. She should be unceremoniously kicked out of office today.
Tuesday evening, after the votes were counted in Pennsylvania, David Nir and Jeff Singer wrote about the contours of the Republican losses. The numbers alone, they wrote “don't tell the complete story of just how ancestrally Republican Pennsylvania's 36th District is. Since taking its present form in Lancaster County 40 years ago, the district has always been held by the GOP… Local Democrats, however, were undeterred, taking heart— and advice— from their counterparts in Iowa, who flipped a comparatively conservative legislative seat in January. That district, though, had gone blue as recently as 2018; the 36th never had.”
Malone, meanwhile, raised nearly as much money as Parsons and got a boost from a prominent Pennsylvania Democrat, Pittsburgh-area Rep. Chris Deluzio, who trekked across the state to campaign with Malone before the election. (Lancaster County is about 90 minutes west of Philadelphia.)
Malone focused his message heavily on education and cuts to the federal government that he's had to deal with as mayor of a small town, specifically calling out Musk for slashing “benefits for veterans, retirees, and students."
He also did not shy away from popular positions on reproductive rights and touted an endorsement from Planned Parenthood. And he specifically urged voters to back him as "an extra Democratic voice" who would bring greater balance to the GOP-controlled Senate.
Parsons, meanwhile, emphasized low taxes and grocery prices, but he failed to show up at a recent candidate forum— the same mistake that the Republican candidate had made in the Iowa race.
Malone's shock victory shrinks the GOP's margin in the state Senate to 27-23. It also improves Democratic odds of winning the chamber in 2026, when half of its seats— including Malone's— will be up.
The GOP-aligned crypto-cartel and MAGA enforcer Elon Musk have started spending money against Josh Weil in Florida. Everyone is jumping into that race now that it looks like Randy Fine could be in serious trouble— everybody that is except DelBene and the DCCC that she’s flushing down the toilet. Hakeem Jeffries should be ashamed. Last minute contributions to Josh’s Get Out the Vote efforts here.
Yesterday, Elliott Morris wrote that “The 2026 midterm election cycle is starting off similar to 2018, with signs of mass mobilization and electoral over-performance strongly favoring the Democrats… This all feels eerily similar to the electoral shifts America felt during Trump’s first term, doesn’t it? Well, empirically it actually is… For the 2026 election cycle so far, there have been 14 contested special elections in state house districts across the country… Democratic candidates across those 14 seats beat Harris’s margin vs Trump with the same voters last November by 10 percentage points on average. That is, in the average state legislative district that has held a special so far in 2025, Harris beat Trump by 15 points in 2024. But in the special election for that average seat, the Democrat beat the Republican candidate by 25 points. The biggest swings (24-25 points) have been in two Iowa House and Senate districts, while two seats in blue states (Delaware and Connecticut) actually moved toward Republicans by a couple points. In 12 of the 14 elections, Democratic candidates beat Harris’s margin. Here’s the full list of specials for 2025:
“One simple fact remains,” he concluded. “If Democrats are doing better with higher turnout voters, given the increasingly sharp relationships between (1) education and turnout and (2) education and voting Democratic, the party should basically necessarily expect to do well in the 2026 midterms… One other consideration is that Democrats also have the edge with high-income voters, who are likelier to turn out than the average voter.”
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