that one of the Dem seats was won posthumously by Tony DeLuca, Summer Lee was just elected to Congress and Austin Davis was elected Lt Gov, leaving 3 Dem seats open. These seats are all Pgh area seats and should remain Dem, but there'll have to special elections to fill them.

If not, i appreciate that people would rather vote for the deceased Democrat than the opposition!



on edit, i hope that didn't sound particularly callous. No offense to the departed intended. To the contrary!

(link) https://www.post-gazette.com/news/obituaries/2022/10/10/tony-deluca-dies-longest-serving-pennsylvania-state-representative-house-democrats-penn-hills/stories/202210100062

In all honesty, he should have stepped down early and let someone else take the spot. He ably represented Penn Hills (a suburb of Pittsburgh) for almost 40 years. To answer your question, DeLuca ran unopposed in the May primary, and faced a Green Party opponent in the general election.

Regular voters understood that DeLuca was already deceased, but they voted for him anyway to keep the seat open.

Your question wasn't callous. It's not the first time something like this has happened.

Link to tweet

Right now, with DeLuca's seat vacant, it's 101 Dems and 101 Rs.

There are several other complicating factors.

There will ultimately be 3 special elections. One each for DeLuca, Lee and Davis, but they won't happen until the spring.

Summer Lee was elected to Congress. The Congressional swearing in is Jan 3rd, the same day the the state House will be electing its leader. If the leadership vote takes place before the Congressional swearing in ceremony, Lee will be able to attend and vote as a state House member. If not, her seat will also be vacant.

Austin Davis was elected LtGov, but his swearing in for that office is not until Jan 17th. Until then, he's still a member of the state House and can vote for House leadership.

That means, if McClintock is to become Speaker, she would need at least 1 R to vote for her assuming Lee is still a state rep. If Lee's seat is vacant, then she'd need two R votes. It's possible that a couple of the more endangered SE PA R state reps could decide to vote for her, but I don't see that happening. The more likely scenario, imo, is that there will be an interim R Speaker like the moderate R Dennis O'Brien was the last time something similar happened. Interestingly, Shapiro was a state rep back then and helped engineer that deal.