These 5 Pennsylvania congressional races could determine House control

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These 5 Pennsylvania congressional races could determine House control

2024-10-16 12:03 Last Updated At：12:11

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — With the U.S. House narrowly divided, contests for Pennsylvania's seats will be critical to control of the chamber in this year's election, even as the state also plays a big role in determining control of the White House and Senate.

The magic number of pickups is four for Democrats to take control of the House, magnifying the stakes of each House race.

In Pennsylvania, the parties began the year viewing five races as competitive, as Democrats defend their 9-8 advantage in the state's 17-seat delegation.

Adding to the stakes is the fact that Pennsylvania is home to one of the “Biden 16” — the 16 House districts nationally that President Joe Biden won in 2020 but are represented by Republicans.

On the opposite side, Pennsylvania is also home to one of the eight districts that former President Donald Trump won but are represented by Democrats. Five of those Democrats are running for reelection.

Federal Election Commission filings show the candidates and outside groups have poured more than $60 million into the races, with the total expected to climb significantly until polls close on Nov. 5.

For Republicans, there may be room to flip districts: Two incumbent Democrats won by fewer than 2.5 percentage points in 2022.

Here is a look at the five key races:

Four-term Republican U.S. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick in Bucks County, just north of Philadelphia, is a top target again for Democrats: He is one of the Biden 16.

But Fitzpatrick, a mild-mannered former FBI agent who took over the seat from his late brother, has a potent winning formula that includes his family’s name recognition and inroads into traditional Democratic voting districts.

He is endorsed by top-tier labor unions, as well as the AFL-CIO, and is running a digital ad calling himself the “No. 1 most bipartisan congressman.”

His opponent is Ashley Ehasz, a former Army helicopter pilot he beat in 2022 by almost 10 points.

Democrats have attacked Fitzpatrick's vote for Trump’s tax-cutting legislation, his opposition to Trump's impeachment and his support for a 20-week abortion ban in 2017.

Fitzpatrick is running an ad saying he backs abortion rights — specifically, Pennsylvania's law that protects the right to an abortion until 24 weeks of gestation, the Roe v. Wade standard of viability — and cites his votes to protect access to IVF and contraception.

Fitzpatrick has more than doubled Ehasz's fundraising and her campaign hasn't attracted any outside groups to spend against Fitzpatrick.

Three-term Democratic U.S. Rep. Susan Wild and six-term Democratic U.S. Rep. Matt Cartwright are each a perennial Republican target in their eastern Pennsylvania districts and each has consistently fended off challengers, if by slim margins.

Their races are emerging as the most expensive congressional contests in the state.

Cartwright has the distinction of being one of five Democrats nationally running for reelection in a district won by Trump in 2020 — even though his 8th District seat includes Scranton, the city where Biden was born and that played prominently into Biden's winning presidential campaign.

Wild and Cartwright represent neighboring districts with similar geographies: small cities, suburbs and stretches of rural eastern Pennsylvania that include anthracite coal country. The districts are also similar in the narrow registration that Democrats hold over Republicans.

Challenging Wild in her Allentown-area 7th District seat is state Rep. Ryan Mackenzie. Wild outraised Mackenzie almost 7-to-1 through June 30.

Challenging Cartwright is Rob Bresnahan, a first-time candidate and developer who runs a family construction company.

Cartwright outraised Bresnahan by more than 2-to-1 through June 30, with outside groups pouring more than $11 million into it, according to disclosures to the Federal Election Commission.

The Wild-Mackenzie race isn't far behind, with outside groups spending more than $10 million on it, according to the disclosures.

The hard-right politics of six-term Republican U.S. Rep. Scott Perry have made him a perennial target for Democrats in a Republican-leaning district around the cities of Harrisburg and York, with deep-red exurbs, rolling farm country and fast-growing suburbs.

Perry was chairman of the Freedom Caucus, a hard-line faction of conservatives that exerts outsize influence on the GOP majority, and was the only lawmaker to have his cellphone seized by FBI agents investigating the web of Trump loyalists who were central to the former president's bid to remain in power after his 2020 reelection loss.

More about Perry's efforts to help Trump emerged since he was last reelected in 2022. Those details included Perry’s efforts to elevate Jeffrey Clark to Trump’s acting attorney general — designed to reverse the Department of Justice’s stance that it had found no evidence of widespread voting fraud that would change the election result.

Perry has not been charged with a crime.

Perry won reelection in 2022 by almost 8 points against a relatively weak opponent. This time around he's facing Janelle Stelson, a longtime local TV news anchor who is a household name.

Stelson has her own baggage: She's a Republican-turned-Democrat who doesn't live in the district. Still, she has relentlessly attacked Perry over his opposition to abortion rights and his role in trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Chris Deluzio is being challenged in his western Pennsylvania district by state Rep. Rob Mercuri in a race that hasn't made as much noise as the others.

Deluzio, a freshman, outraised Mercuri by nearly 3-to-1 through June 30 and the race has attracted little interest from outside groups.

Registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by a 4-3 ratio in the district, which encompasses Pittsburgh's western suburbs and one-time steel towns along the Ohio River in Allegheny County up through Beaver County.

Follow Marc Levy at twitter.com/timelywriter.

In a calendar rarity, Hanukkah starts this year on Christmas Day

2024-12-22 00:17 Last Updated At：00:20

Hanukkah, Judaism’s eight-day Festival of Lights, begins this year on Christmas Day, which has only happened four times since 1900.

For some rabbis, the intersection of the two religious holidays provides an auspicious occasion for interfaith engagement.

“This can be a profound opportunity for learning and collaboration and togetherness,” said Rabbi Josh Stanton, a vice president of the Jewish Federations of North America. He oversees interfaith initiatives involving the 146 local and regional Jewish federations that his organization represents.

“The goal is not proselytizing; it's learning deeply from each other,” he said. “It’s others seeing you as you see yourself.”

One example of togetherness: a Chicanukah party hosted Thursday evening by several Jewish organizations in Houston, bringing together members of the city’s Latino and Jewish communities for a “cross cultural holiday celebration." The venue: Houston’s Holocaust museum.

The food on offer was a blend of the two cultures — for example a latke bar featuring guacamole, chili con queso and pico de gallo, as well as applesauce and sour cream. The doughnut-like pastries were sufganiyot — a Hanukkah specialty — and buñuelos, And the mariachi band took a crack at playing the Jewish folk song “Hava Nagila.”

“What really brings us together is our shared values — our faith, our families, our heritage,” said Erica Winsor, public affairs officer for the Jewish Federation of Greater Houston.

Rabbi Peter Tarlow, executive director of the Houston-based Center for Latino-Jewish Relations, said the first Chicanukah event 12 years ago drew 20 people, while this year the crowd numbered about 300, and could have been larger had not attendance been capped. He said the party-goers were a roughly even mix of Latinos — some of them Jews with Latin American origins — and “Anglo” Jews.

“There’s too much hate, too much separation against both Jews and Latinos,” Tarlow said. “This is a way we can come together and show we support each other.”

While Hanukkah is intended as an upbeat, celebratory holiday, rabbis note that it’s taking place this year amid continuing conflicts involving Israeli forces in the Middle East, and apprehension over widespread incidents of antisemitism.

Rabbi Moshe Hauer, executive vice president of the Orthodox Union, acknowledged that many Jews may be feeling anxious heading into Hanukkah this year. But he voiced confidence that most would maintain the key tradition: the lighting of candles on menorah candelabras and displaying where they’re visible through household windows and in public spaces.

“The posture of our community — without stridency, just with determination — is that the menorah should be in our windows, in a place where the public sees it,” Hauer said.

“It is less for us, the Jewish community, than for the world,” he added. “We have to share that light. Putting the menorah in the window is our expression of working to be a light among the nations.”

Hauer concurred with Stanton that this year’s overlap of Hanukkah and Christmas is “an exceptional opportunity to see and experience the diversity of America and the diversity of its communities of faith.”

Rabbi Motti Seligson, public relations director for the Hasidic movement Chabad-Lubavitch, noted that this year marks the 50th anniversary of a milestone in the public lightings of menorahs. It was on Dec. 8, 1974 — as part of an initiative launched by the Lubavitcher leader, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson — that a menorah was lit outside Philadelphia’s Independence Hall, where the Liberty Bell was housed at the time.

"Hanukkah is a celebration of religious liberty, so that it’s not taken for granted,” Seligson said. “One of the ways of doing that is by celebrating it publicly.”

He said Chabad was organizing about 15,000 public menorah lightings this year through its numerous branches around the world.

“There certainly is some apprehension,” Seligson said, referring to concerns about antisemitism and political friction. “Some people question whether Jews will be celebrating as openly as in the past.”

“What I’m hearing is there’s no way that we can’t,” he added. “The only way through these difficult times is by standing stronger and prouder and shining brighter than ever.”

Stanton concurred.

“Through our history, we’ve been through moments that are easy and moments that are hard,” he said. “Safety for us does not come from hiding. It comes from reaching out.”

Why is Hanukkah so late this year? The simple answer is that the Jewish calendar is based on lunar cycles, and is not in sync with the Gregorian calendar which sets Christmas on Dec. 25. Hanukkah always begins on the 25th day of the Jewish month of Kislev, a date which occurs between late November and late December on the Gregorian calendar.

The last time Hanukkah began on Christmas Day was in 2005. But the term “Chrismukkah” — signifying the overlap of the two holidays — had become a popular term before then. The term gained extra currency in 2003, when the character Seth Cohen on the TV drama “The O.C.” embraced the fusion holiday as a tribute to his Jewish father and Protestant mother.

This season, the Hallmark Channel introduced a new Christmas movie called “Leah’s Perfect Gift,” depicting a young Jewish woman who had admired Christmas from a distance, and gets a chance to experience it up close when her boyfriend invites her to spend the holidays with his family. Spoiler alert: All does not go smoothly.

Despite such storylines suggesting a fascination with Christmas among some Jews, Stanton says research by the Jewish Federations reveals a surge in Jews seeking deeper connections to their own traditions and community, as well as a surge in Jews volunteering for charitable activities during the holidays.

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.