Lessons from 2022

What do we do now? The election is over, and like a lot of things, it seemed to take forever to arrive and then end all at once.

This is our last newsletter edition for a while, but email us what you liked or didn’t like so we can make some changes before we see you again. And keep following our work on Inquirer.com and in The Inquirer’s Morning Newsletter, which you can sign up for here.

— Jonathan Tamari, Julia Terruso, (@JonathanTamari, @JuliaTerruso, election@inquirer.com)

If you see this 🔑 in today’s newsletter, that means we’re highlighting our exclusive journalism. You need to be a subscriber to read these stories.

A lot had to go right for Pennsylvania Democrats to come out victorious in last week’s elections. And a lot had to go wrong for Pennsylvania Republicans.

A lot of both happened.

The GOP was saddled with an extremist candidate atop the ticket and a battered Senate nominee. A late visit from Donald Trump reinforced the messages driven by Joe Biden and Democrats as they tried to defy historic trends, brutal inflation, and the Democratic president’s low approval ratings.

Democrats, meanwhile, had a political powerhouse running for governor, a Senate candidate who might have been uniquely positioned to withstand the problems caused by his stroke, and battle-tested incumbents in critical U.S. House races.

They got a boost from the backlash to election denialism 🔑 and the resulting Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, as well as a Supreme Court decision on abortion rights that provided an unusual spark of motivation to more liberal voters.

Here’s a look at the factors that led to stunning Democratic success last week:

📝 Mastriano’s weight

For months, establishment Republicans predicted 🔑 a Doug Mastriano nomination would be a disaster. They were right.

Mastriano served as a perfect foil for Democrats who argued voters should set aside economic worries in the face of fundamental threats to democracy and women’s rights.

But while some Republicans wanted to avert a Mastriano candidacy, stopping him was another story. Mastriano had a seemingly unshakable, base of support. His opponents divvied up slivers of the rest of the GOP vote without anyone emerging as a standout rival.

In the end, he became the face of the GOP after supporting a total ban 🔑 on abortion with no exceptions, elevating false election conspiracies, and going to the Capitol grounds on Jan. 6. He made no effort to reach 🔑 voters beyond his hard-core base.

Members of both parties pointed to Mastriano’s 14-point loss as a huge hill for any other Republican to overcome.

“We suffered down ballot just because of a poor performance at the top,” said Rob Gleason, the former GOP state chair.

A New York Times analysis noted that Democrats tended to do better in places where the elections had direct consequences for democracy and abortion rights.

Because of Mastriano, Pennsylvania was on the front lines for both.

📝 Shapiro ran strong

Shapiro didn’t just win, he rolled up a blowout.

It helped that Shapiro could dominate the airwaves, because Mastriano barely raised enough money 🔑 to advertise. But Shapiro still ran a relentless campaign 🔑 that reached beyond typical Democratic strongholds.

He lost by less than 2 percentage points in Lancaster County, a key vote center for the GOP where Trump won by 16 in 2020. In Northampton County, a bellwether Biden won by less than 1 percentage point, Shapiro won by 13.

Shapiro’s big effort almost certainly lifted other Democrats.

📝 Trump’s intervention

Just as he likes it, Trump’s imprint was all over this election.

His endorsement of Oz almost certainly propelled the celebrity surgeon to the Senate nomination. Mastriano was on his way to victory without Trump, but it’s hard to imagine a nominee like him — fighting culture wars, spreading baseless conspiracies, and defying party elders — without Trump doing it all first.

Trump also pulverized some of the main alternatives to either Oz or Mastriano, hammering Senate candidate Dave McCormick 🔑 as a “liberal Wall Street Republican” and calling gubernatorial candidate Bill McSwain 🔑 a “coward.”

Many Republicans now say Trump 🔑 elevated the wrong choices by focusing on his own interests rather than who could win.

“I think the party is going to learn a lesson that if the candidates’ sole virtue is they’ve got the endorsement of Donald Trump, that’s probably not a very good criteria for success,” said Sen. Pat Toomey (R., Pa.), though he praised Oz as a strong nominee.

Democrats were glad to have Trump on the scene. Instead of a referendum on Biden and inflation, they turned the election into a choice between Democrats and Trump.

📝 Fetterman’s roots

Fetterman had some problems as a candidate — including those in his control (liberal policy pronouncements he had to walk back), and the big uncontrollable: his stroke. But he was perhaps uniquely positioned to withstand months off the campaign trail.

Democrats stressed how often they say they — and ordinary voters — saw Fetterman in their communities during his years as lieutenant governor, or before.

Neil Makhija said he saw Fetterman in his former home, Carbon County, back in 2015 during Fetterman’s first Senate run. “He was talking to this very small group of Democrats, and I remember thinking, if he’d go talk to them, he’ll go anywhere, and he’s been doing that ever since,” said Makhija, executive director of IMPACT, an Indian American political organization.

Democrats believe Fetterman’s travels, and innate Pennsylvania-ness, helped him when he couldn’t physically be on the trail. And he had maybe an ideal rival 🔑 in that regard. Oz hadn’t lived in the state since graduating from Penn in the 1980s. (He moved back in late 2020.)

“I supported him and I liked him and I thought he worked hard, but [Oz] had no connection at all to the Republican Party of Pennsylvania,” said Gleason, the former GOP chair, who had backed McCormick in the primary. “He was a guy who parachuted in and became our nominee, and that doesn’t work in Pennsylvania.”

📝 Abortion energizes Dems

Usually, it’s the party out of power that’s angry and ready to run through walls to vote.

But the high court decision on abortion reminded Democrats 🔑, and some swing voters, of the stakes of individual elections. That was especially true in Pennsylvania 🔑, given the potential for Mastriano to sign sweeping abortion restrictions if he were elected.

Sephora Brooks, 33, said abortion was a key reason she backed Democrats at her West Philly polling place last week.

“They believe that women should still have those rights,” said Brooks, a nurse. “You never know the circumstances a woman might go through. Timing ain’t right, certain things are going on in your life. The option should be available to them, at all times. I believe in that.”

Democrats believe the issue was particularly potent in the suburbs, where Oz tried to win back 🔑 swing voters with a focus on crime. But he got the same dismal 40% in the Philly collar counties as Trump in 2020.

📝 Pragmatism still works

Pennsylvania has pockets of far left and far right, but when you put the state together, it’s moderate on the whole, and often looking for pragmatism.

That was proven again.

When Mastriano was rallying with Trump on Nov. 5, he spent much of his speech attacking issues around transgender people and declaring he would fight against graphic pornography in schools. Shapiro, at the rally with Biden and Obama at almost the same exact time, talked about scaling back standardized testing, and increasing support for vo-tech programs and mental health counseling in schools.

Even Fetterman, known for his brash stands, tempered some of them, including around fracking and decriminalizing drugs 🔑, aiming to avoid being painted as a candidate of the far left. Oz cast himself 🔑 as the candidate of “balance,” far outpacing Mastriano even as he fell short overall.

Hewing toward the center in Pennsylvania still works.

“It just seems like whatever party gets into office, they take the steering wheel and just kinda yank it this way. And then we get someone who wants to yank it that way, and most of us just want to move forward and have a safe place for our kids to grow up and programs for our people.”

— Clayton Wood, a 56-year-old registered Republican in Harrisburg, whose comments echoed a lot of voters we heard, sick of the rancor and politically in the middle.

🫢 How to cover an election without much access to candidates

We went this entire general election without a single sit-down interview with Oz or Mastriano and we had one 15-minute interview with Fetterman (two if you include his editorial board meeting which we were invited to observe). We were hardly alone in that regard when it comes to Pennsylvania news outlets. That’s a pretty big change in how candidates relate to the media – and a big shift from previous races in which we had frequent access to challengers and incumbents.

Pat Toomey and Bob Casey both routinely got on the phone during their 2016 and 2018 reelections, or made themselves available at events, to answer specific questions about their policies and issues of the day.

Access is key to the work we do but in the absence of it, we relied heavily on sources around the candidates and their public comments.

It also meant that as the candidates tried to mold their images and, at times, walk back past positions, we were often left only with vague, carefully crafted statements from their campaign teams that skirted key issues. We couldn’t hear directly from the candidates or challenge them with follow-up questions.

Unfortunately, as social media and partisan news outlets play a larger and larger role in the public debate, and campaigns focus more often on rousing their base voters, this might be the way elections go. It’s probably no coincidence that Fetterman and Oz were able to do it, because they each came to the contest with huge followings.

Mastriano, too, had his own fervent following and didn’t seem interested in talking to anyone outside of it.

Shapiro was the candidate who probably needed the media the least, given his big leads, but he was easily the most accessible and willing to answer live questions. Maybe it’s because he’s the least like a celebrity and most like a traditional elected official.

🗣 The fleeting importance of debates

In a year with two huge races on the ballot, there was just one debate. It was a big moment that got a lot of attention for Fetterman’s communication challenges but in the end, it seemed to matter little to the outcome.

We think debates are great. They show you how candidates think on their feet and in high-pressure situations. For many voters, it’s their own glimpse at a politician outside of a TV ad, but we do wonder what the future will be for debates.

And the smaller lessons…

🚗 Always make sure the rental car comes with a phone charging port.

💻 Better to assume the Wi-Fi at campaign rallies won’t work.

🍕 Northeast Pa. does pizza very differently.

🟦 Twitter trolls can be ruthless. Ignore them to preserve your sanity.

How John Fetterman won Pennsylvania’s Senate race

6 Pennsylvania election takeaways: Shapiro’s ascendency, Fetterman’s plan, and Trump’s bad night

‘It’s time for him to retire’: Some Pa. Republicans want to push Trump aside after their election losses 🔑

How Doug Mastriano’s run for Pa. governor veered far off course

🦃 We’re off! May your Turkey day tables be filled with good food and non-political conversation.