Is Conor Lamb the Next Big Democratic Upset?
This 33-year-old Marine has a chance at winning one of the GOP’s most reliable districts.
By JIM SAKSA
February 18, 2018
HOUSTON, Pa. — “Jesus always started out by going and being with a certain group of people,†says Conor Lamb as we’re winding down hilly back roads to the Washington County Gun Show. It snowed a few inches in Southwestern Pennsylvania last night and, other than the highways we’re avoiding, nothing’s been plowed. While I’m silently saying Hail Marys as the campaign staffer driving whips around farms and fields, Lamb calmly continues explaining how his faith informs his politics.
Jesus, Lamb tells me, tried to get to know people as people before he tried to win them over with arguments. He “wasn’t asking people where they stood on abortion before they came and sat down with them.â€
Lamb, the Democratic candidate in a neck-and-neck special election on March 13, has to hope the people of Pennsylvania’s 18th Congressional District will likewise listen to what he has to say before judging him by his party affiliation. In this part of the state, where highway billboards sport Bible verses and the start of deer hunting season is a holiday, Democratic politicians tend to flunk doctrinal tests. Even though registered Democrats technically outnumber Republicans here by 70,000, Trump won the district by nearly 20 percentage points. Mitt Romney and John McCain posted similar margins. Former Rep. Tim Murphy, the outspoken anti-abortion Republican whose seat Lamb is running to fill—Murphy resigned after reports that he encouraged his married mistress to get an abortion after a pregnancy scare—won eight straight elections, the first six by double-digit margins and the last two uncontested.
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https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/02/18/conor-lamb-pennsylvania-special-election-profile-217018