HARRISBURG (TNS) — Republicans in Pennsylvania got some good news Monday in their surprisingly shaky quest to maintain a majority in the state House of Representatives.
Joseph Hogan, the GOP candidate in the 142nd state House District in Bucks County, was the beneficiary of an adjusted in-person vote count that has taken him from the position of trailing Democratic candidate Mark Moffa by two votes, to holding a 114-vote lead.
The current count is Hogan, 15,353, or 51.2 percent; and Moffa, 15,239, or 49.8 percent.
With 275 provisional and 156 segregated mail-in and absentee ballots still up for review by the county’s board of elections, and at least 32 additional military and overseas ballots left to count, the race is still too close to call.
But the adjusted count definitely bolsters the GOP’s chance at retaining this seat, whose current officeholder, Rep. Frank Farry, is moving to the state Senate in the 2023-24 term.
Coming into this week, the Democrats had claimed victory in 101 state House seats, and the Republicans 100. Democrats will start the new legislative term with a vacancy, however, due to the mid-campaign death of Rep. Tony DeLuca, D- Allegheny.
Majority control of the House then hinges on the results of the 142nd, and the 151st District seat in Montgomery County, where six-term incumbent Rep. Todd Stephens is clinging to a 12-vote lead over Democratic challenger Melissa Cerrato.
It was not immediately clear what the universe of still pending votes is in the Montgomery County race.
According to Bucks County spokesman Jim O’Malley, the new votes in the 142nd District were from a Northampton Township voting precinct that was one of three across the county where data from a voting machine did not get fully downloaded into the county’s election reporting system last week.
O’Malley said the undercounts were discovered by board of elections staff late Friday, and the counts were refreshed today.
PennLive reached out to Moffa’s campaign and the House Democratic Campaign Committee for their reaction to the 142nd corrections, but did not get an immediate response.
O’Malley said the Bucks Board of Elections will meet Tuesday to receive reports on the provisional ballots and the remaining mail-in ballots that had been flagged during initial canvassing, and make final judgments about which of those get added to the count.
The knife’s edge situation with the House majority was clearly not lost on legislators who returned to session in Harrisburg this week.
On Monday, Rep. Daryl Metcalfe, R-Butler, the majority chair of the House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee, called a final meeting of his committee for the purpose of approving a letter condemning the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection for not holding an additional public comment period on a new set of proposed oil and gas regulations.
Metcalfe, who is retiring, has used the committee to crusade against environmental regulations he views as government overreach — with Monday’s meeting the last scheduled opportunity for him to do so, and potentially the last time that Republicans will hold the gavel in the committee for the next two years.
“This extremism, this anti-environmentalism, is one of the many reasons you are about to fall into the minority,” quipped Democratic chair Greg Vitali, leading to outcries from the Republican side of the dais that their majority was not yet lost.
“It’ll be interesting if you happen to be in the majority,” Metcalfe retorted, noting that votes are still being counted and blaming the uncertainty on “the Supreme Court corrupting our process” and “turning our election laws upside-down.”
