If the Democrats win a majority in the House of Representatives, the Mid-Atlantic region (especially New Jersey and Pennsylvania) will play a significant role. Just two years ago, the Republicans had thirteen of the eighteen House seats in Pennsylvania and has six of the twelve House seats in New Jersey. After picking up one House seat in New Jersey in 2016 and one House seat in Pennsylvania in a special election earlier this year, Democrats are posed for major gains in this year’s election. The other states are a little less likely to see major changes.
Starting up north in New York, New York has a race for Governor, a race for Senator, and 27 House races. Democrats should easily win the state-wide races and keep their current seats. Picking up Republican seats, however, will not be easy. It looks like the Democrats should gain at least one seats, but there is a real chance at gaining as much as five seats. The most interesting race will be New York’s Twenty-seventh District where Republican crook Chris Collins is standing for re-election. Collins is on the ballot mostly because New York law did not allow the Republicans to replace him. The race may come down to how many Republicans vote for the Reform Party candidate.
New Jersey is where things can flip dramatically. In barely two years, the Congressional delegation could go from evenly divided to 11 Democrats and 1 Republican. Senator Menendez is in potential trouble given his recent scandals. He has an opponent who has just as many issues but also a very big wallet.
Pennsylvania, like New York, has races for Governor and Senator as well as its eighteen House seats. those two races should be relatively easy wins which will help push the House races in the right direction. The House races this year features new maps that are mostly fair. Democrats still have a geographic disadvantage, but it is more of a 10-8 map instead of a 13-5 map. But with a strong top of the ticket, the Democrats are favored to win at least nine seats and may gain one more seat in Pennsylvania’s First District. Add four seats in Pennsylvania to four seats in New Jersey, and maybe two seats in New York and that is almost half of the seats that the Democrats need to gain nationally to take the House.
The other three states in this region have fewer chances for Democratic gains. Democratic Senators are up for re-election in both Maryland and Delaware and Democrats are defending eight of the nine House seats in those two states (with the last House seat being stuffed with Republicans). The only outside chance is taking back the Governor’s mansion in Maryland. But like Massachusetts, even though the state is solidly Democratic, the Republican governor in Maryland is personally popular which should be enough for him to survive.
That brings us to West Virginia. The reality is that the coal industry is, and should be, on life support, but that is a lot of workers for whom we need some alternative way to make a decent living. That means that any Democratic Senator from West Virginia is going to have to vote against the party on many issues. If we had sixty-five Democratic votes in the Senate, we could afford to say we need a “real” Democrat in the seat. With us needing every seat to regain the majority and keep Trump from spreading his unique level of corruption into the judicial system, we need Joe Manchin to win. Picking up a House seat in West Virginia is going to be hard, but we have a shot at West Virginia’s Third District.
The difference between West Virginia and the rest of this region (and it was hard figuring which region to put West Virginia into) can be shown by the referendums on the November ballot. In Maryland, there is a referendum to allow same day voting. In West Virginia, there is a referendum to clarify that there is no state constitutional right to abortion (preparing for Justice Kavanaugh to vote to overrule Roe).
In short, the Mid-Atlantic region is a chance to make a very big change in the composition of Congress, but it’s going to take weeks of hard work.
