On Tuesday, Pennsylvania‘s three statewide row officers — state Attorney General Dave Sunday, Treasurer Stacy Garrity, and Auditor General Tim DeFoor — were sworn into office, marking the first time all three statewide offices were held by Republicans.
All three of the row officers were joined at the ceremony by Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA), as well as former Govs. Tom Corbett and Mark Schweiker, both Republicans.
Both Corbett and Shapiro were one time state attorneys general who successfully ran for, and won, governor’s seats. Former Sen. Bob Casey was both a state auditor general and state treasurer before he lost his bid for governor in the 2002 Democratic primary against Ed Rendell. Casey then went on to run and win three consecutive Senate races until losing to Sen. Dave McCormick (R-PA) last November.
Pennsylvania has gone from a Democrat-dominated state to a more conservative one with the party losing an incumbent Senate seat and all three row offices. Democrats also lost two of the nine congressional house seats that they held since the lines were redrawn after the 2020 census redistricting.
Those two new Republican House seats held by Reps. Robert Bresnahan Jr. (R-PA) and Ryan Mackenzie (R-PA) flipped the Pennsylvania delegation’s majority from a 9-8 Democratic majority to a now 10-7 Republican majority.
Republicans also hold the majority in the state Senate. Democrats’ slim majority in the state House temporarily came to an end on Sunday when state Rep. Matthew Gergely, 45, died after a sudden illness over the Christmas holiday.
His death leaves the state House with a tied makeup of 101 Republicans and 101 Democrats.
Shapiro, who ordered U.S. and commonwealth flags in the state to fly at half-staff immediately in honor of Gergely, called for a special election for his seat to be held in March. The district is located in the working class region of the Mon Valley that includes the cities of McKeesport, Homestead, Duquesne, White Oak, and Clairton.
Gergely was deeply rooted and beloved in the community. Currently Democrats hold a 2-1 voter registration advantage in the district. President Donald Trump did not win the district. However, local Democrats running for Allegheny County district attorney and chief executive did not win their races there against Republicans in 2023.
Pennsylvania has gone through a political realignment over the past few years beginning with the election of Trump as president in 2016, marking the first time a Republican candidate for president had won the state since 1988.
It is a realignment that has happened largely thanks to the working class who have moved their long time support for Democrats over to Republican candidates.
Trump’s decisive layup in 2024, as well as McCormick’s win over Casey, has left many Democrats scrambling to figure out how to blunt the movement right.
One of the most interesting tells about where the state might be going was the decline of registered Democrats since Joe Biden was sworn into office in 2021. At that time, there were over 630,000 more registered Democrats in the state than Republicans. By November of last year, that number was cut in half. As of Jan. 20, that Democratic voter registration number now stands at 191,304.
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Both parties now face big challenges. For the Republicans, the challenge is proving to voters they can govern. For Democrats, it is figuring out how to reach the voters they lost, and then find out why. Neither party’s challenges will be easy.
While it is sometimes easier to be in the minority because you can pick apart everything the opposition is doing, what voters here tell me is that they are hopeful Republicans can govern, even if it is sometimes messy. If Republicans have a string of successes, Democrats will have bigger problems.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
