Keeping the 102: House Dems on Nov 4 Victory

There is no denial of the red wave that swept across the nation in last weeks elections. In Pennsylvania, all five statewide races went to the GOP. Two U.S. Congress seats also flipped from democrat to Republican.

However, there was a blip of blue victory in the Commonwealth.

“For all of those people who woke up in fear, fear not. Fret not,” Rep. Jordan Harris said during a celebratory press conference this week. "Because if there's going to be a cog in the wheel, if there's going to be a finger in this dam, it is going to be the house Democratic caucus of Pennsylvania."

House Democrats went into the 2024 election with 102 members out of the 203 member house.

When the smoke cleared, they had kept their 1 seat majority.

“Because we came at it with such a grassroots approach, it was really just about our local campaigns,” Madeline Zann said, executive director for the Pennsylvania House Democratic Campaign Committee. "'Well, here in Bucks county, these are the issues that we're facing. And here is what I brought back for the community and in grants and in funding and in all of these things’."

"So I don't know that any of us consciously thought about it as separating from the national environment,” Zann said. "But just trying to make the point of this is what the state legislature does and what the state legislature can do for you.”

Across the state, margins did get tighter for many Democrat representatives. Some of that can be traced to citizen migration. But much of it can also link to the national political trends.

Rep. Ryan Bizzarro (D-Erie), policy chair for the house Democrats, says one reason his party kept their seats was because of their policy focuses in the past two years.

“You can't paint Democrats with a broad brush. We stand for a lot of issues that are important to everyday people,” Bizzarro said. “Issues that are kitchen table issues, bread and butter issues. You know, we understand that the economy is is top of mind for many Pennsylvanians. And we've been focusing on policies that surround that.”

Looking at other state legislatures this year, there’s similar stories of shift but not change. Republicans did flip chambers in Minnesota and Michigan, but both parties made grounds in small ways at those highly local state races across the nation.