As Democrats fight to keep control of the Pa. House, poll shows their agenda is popular

HARRISBURG — As Democrats seek to maintain their slim majority in the Pennsylvania House, a new poll shows the main tenets of their policy agenda are popular with most voters.

The party currently holds 102 seats to Republicans’ 101. Democrats flipped the chamber in 2022 after more than a decade of GOP control.

Still, the opinions of voters statewide matter little in legislative races. Less than a dozen are considered competitive, meaning a small number of voters will determine which party wins the chamber.

With the state Senate likely to stay under Republican control, a Democratic majority in the state House is key to advancing Gov. Josh Shapiro’s agenda and blocking constitutional amendments favored by the GOP including expanded voter ID.

Under Democratic control, the Pennsylvania House has advanced policies expanding universal background checks for guns, providing discrimination protections to people based on sexual orientation, and raising the minimum wage to $15. Using these examples, the poll asked 800 likely voters if they approved or disapproved of this policy agenda.

Of those surveyed, 63% said they strongly or somewhat supported the agenda, while 32% somewhat or strongly disagreed. Five percent said they were undecided.

The agenda appealed to more than Democrats — 63% of respondents not affiliated with a major party and 34% of Republican respondents voiced support.

The poll was conducted by the MassINC Polling Group between Sept. 12 and 18.

All 203 seats in the Pennsylvania House will be on the ballot this November, but less than two dozen are considered competitive, as Spotlight PA previously reported. They include:

• District 13, Chester County: Republican John Lawrence

• District 16, Beaver County: Democrat Rob Matzie

• District 18, Bucks County: Republican K.C. Tomlinson

• District 28, Allegheny County: Open (Republican Rob Mercuri is not running for reelection)

• District 33, Allegheny County: Democrat Mandy Steele

• District 38, Allegheny County: Open (Democrat Nick Pisciottano is not running for reelection)

• District 41, Lancaster County: Republican Brett Miller

• District 44, Allegheny County: Republican Valerie Gaydos

• District 72, Cambria County: Democrat Frank Burns

• District 88, Cumberland County: Republican Sheryl Delozier

• District 118, Lackawanna, Luzerne Counties: Democrat Jim Haddock

• District 121, Luzerne County: Democrat Eddie Day Pashinski

• District 137, Northampton County: Republican Joe Emrick

• District 142, Bucks County: Republican Joe Hogan

• District 144, Bucks County: Democrat Brian Munroe

• District 160, Chester, Delaware Counties: Republican Craig Williams

• District 187, Lehigh County: Open (Republican Ryan Mackenzie is not running for reelection)

These districts are wide-ranging, encompassing old industry havens and up-and-coming suburbs. Each district is also small, with roughly 64,000 people. That means localized issues or a legislator’s brand can make a big difference.

Take Anna Thomas, a 28-year-old planning commission member running as a Democrat against state Rep. Joe Emrick (R., Northampton). She told Spotlight PA she wasn’t surprised by the topline numbers that favored the Democrats’ policy agenda.

Emrick, who did not respond to a request for comment, voted against all three of the policies Spotlight PA asked voters about.

Still, Thomas said none have come up on the campaign trail. Instead, her conversations with voters focus on two other issues: education funding — particularly property taxes, which districts rely on heavily to fund schools — and the proliferation of warehouses throughout the Lehigh Valley district.

“My job is, you would say, to be a specialist in my House district,” Thomas said.

Some Republicans in swing districts voted in favor of the polled policies. Universal background checks garnered the support of nine state House Republicans, including Valerie Gaydos, who is running for reelection in Pittsburgh’s western suburbs.

Gaydos said she voted in favor of the bill because the issue is popular with voters in her district. First elected in 2018, Gaydos has cast herself as a pragmatist willing to work with anyone. For instance, she carries an endorsement from the Forward Party — founded by former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang— and helped Democrats pass a bill to tighten regulations on pharmacy benefit managers.

Still, Gaydos doesn’t think the Democrats’ agenda is as popular as the poll indicated since the survey focused only on three varied topics. She argued that it misrepresented the work legislators do in Harrisburg.

Voters “think all we talk about is abortion, guns, and minimum wage,” Gaydos said. “That is such a de minimis part of what we do to make Pennsylvania run.”

In the years since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade, Democrats have made abortion a main campaign topic. The Spotlight PA poll showed nearly half of voters consider it to be a top issue when considering who to pick for president this November.

Crime, meanwhile, has been a Republican focus. Commonwealth Leaders Fund, a conservative political action committee mostly funded by billionaire Jeff Yass, has run ads and mailers attacking Democrats on criminal justice in districts where former President Donald Trump performed well.

One attack leveled against at least five Democrats focuses on a proposed constitutional amendment introduced by state House Speaker Joanna McClinton (D., Philadelphia).

Currently, the five-member Board of Pardons must vote unanimously to recommend the governor grant clemency to individuals serving life sentences or death sentences. Pennsylvania voters raised the bar from three to five votes through a 1997 constitutional amendment after a person who had been granted clemency committed multiple rapes and two murders.

McClinton, a former public defender, wants to lower the bar back to three votes.

That proposal has fed political attacks that have ended up in voters’ mailboxes. Multiple mailers seen by Spotlight PA claim vulnerable Democrats voted alongside “Philadelphia liberals,” and thanks to their vote, “it could become easier for the politicians to pardon murders, rapists and child molesters.”

While two committees voted to advance the bill, the full state House — including the targeted Democrats — never cast a vote to approve it.

McClinton did call it up for final consideration last year, which led to almost an hour of heated debate in which Republicans raised concerns similar to those on the mailers. In the end, Democratic leadership pulled the bill before it was put to a final vote. It was later tabled and hasn’t been considered since.

In an email, Commonwealth Leaders Fund Treasurer Matt Brouillette acknowledged that the bill did not pass, but argued that “every Pennsylvanian needs to know” it advanced and that it’s “unconscionable” that the body “found time to move it at all.”

State Rep. Frank Burns is a Democrat who represents a western Pennsylvania district where voters have overwhelmingly backed Trump. In an email, he called the attacks misleading and accused his opponent, Republican Amy Bradley, of “signing over” her campaign to the Yass-funded PAC.

“At each opportunity she had to be truthful, Amy Bradley chose to take the corporate money and to sell out Cambria County people,” Burns said.

In an email, Bradley pointed to amendments to the proposal that all Democrats including Burns rejected, including one that would have raised the threshold from three to four votes. “Every vote mattered when Frank Burns cast the deciding 102nd vote for Joanna McClinton,” Bradley said, referencing Burns' vote in favor of McClinton’s speakership, “and that makes him responsible for the liberal Philadelphia agenda that has followed.”

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