Republican House Candidate Warns Opponent Is ‘Chameleon’

Unable to choose between Cookies N’ Cream and Deep Dish Apple Pie, he chooses both, to the delight of the woman behind the counter. Behind him trails a mustachioed man.

Inside the White House, Trump and his aides have dismissed suggestions that the contest is a referendum on him and have berated GOP candidate Rick Saccone, 60, for running a sluggish campaign against Democrat Conor Lamb, 33, according to three Republicans who were not authorised to speak publicly. He also appreciates that Lamb has run a campaign that has largely avoided anti-Trump messaging, refraining from flaming a president many in the district still support.

The best way to get at that question is to look at how each candidate is doing in each of the 18th District’s four counties and compare that to county benchmarks based off of the past two presidential results.

A Republican victory won’t deliver instant relief to the party.

Such is the significance of this race that Mr Trump himself stumped on Saturday for Mr Saccone in District 18.

Just like Trump, Democrat Lamb is in favour of tariffs on steel and aluminum, which may bolster his chances in the former steel, coal and manufacturing district on Tuesday. And a Monmouth University poll released Monday showed Lamb ahead of Saccone by 6 points, 51 percent to 45 percent. “Lamb seems to have connected with them”, said Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute. This triggered the special election.

The fact that the Republicans are so focused on this election demonstrates that they are anxious about the competitiveness of this race.

Trump has closely followed the race for weeks and received multiple briefings on it last week, a senior White House official said. He identifies politically as an independent. That somehow didn’t even make the top ten list of unhinged things Trump said just in that one speech. Isn’t there something wrong with this picture? His opponent was a military intelligence officer as well as a diplomat, and Republican groups have supported his campaign with millions of dollars.

Never mind, that’s actually a Republican operative trashing now-Rep.

Just past year, Democrat Doug Jones was propelled to an Alabama special election victory over Republican Roy Moore when more than $10 million of outside money went to supporting Jones and opposing Moore, compared to under $3.3 million spent supporting Moore and opposing Jones.

The farther east or west you go from the epicenter of the district map just south of downtown Pittsburgh, the more NRA stickers (both Saccone and Lamb oppose AR-15 and bump stock bans) you are likely to see.

Trump visited twice, including a rally Saturday night where he spoke for 75 minutes and whipped supporters up to back Saccone.

Tuesday’s special election was triggered by Murphy resigning from the seat he held for almost 15 years, following a sex scandal. The party had hoped to replace Murphy with a social conservative who was sensitive to the economic concerns of blue-collar voters.

“Rick Saccone was endorsed wholeheartedly by the right-to-work committee and would probably do away with unions if he could”, Waters said.

The signs of trouble go beyond Pennsylvania. But Trump risked another embarrassing defeat after backing Republican Roy Moore in last December’s Alabama Senate election, only to watch Moore lose a seat his party had held since 1997. He said that CNN is “fake as hell. the worst, so fake”, but added that “NBC is perhaps worst than CNN. and MSNBC is awful“. In 24 consecutive special House elections, the party defending the vacant district has been victorious, according to data compiled by Bloomberg Government. Candidates get more favorable ad-rates than outside groups.

But if the energy on the ground is any indication, the trajectory appears to favor Lamb. “He’s young blood”, says Ralph Rankin, a retired highway worker.

His biggest concern going into Tuesday’s election and also as the 2018 midterms approach was making sure the voters who got his father elected by coming out to vote don’t get complacent. For this faction of Democrats, Lamb’s social moderation is fine locally, but in no way fine nationally. Democrats can win over a good number of these voters by nominating candidates who fit their district, rather than those who pass every progressive litmus test.

He said he remembers when the state’s industrial areas in that region were churning out Firestone tires and steel.