November 9, 2018

To: All WCAHA Members

From: Pennsylvania Residential Owners Association (PROA)

An Overview of the 2018 Election Results is below. It is not final, since some races have not been finally decided.

Please see the linked PDF for a detailed breakdown of the PA races.

ELECTION RESULTS OVERVIEW

NATIONAL
Incumbent Democratic Senator Bob Casey won a third term in the U.S. Senate, 56% to 42%. He beat out Republican challenger Cong. Lou Barletta, who was the first Republican Congressman to announce support for then-candidate Trump and had strong support from the President.

Five Congressional seats flipped from Republican to Democrat. This and 7 open seats changed the Commonwealth’s 18 Congressional makeup from 13 Republicans & 3 Democrats to 9 Republicans & 9 Democrats.

PA STATEWIDE
Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf won re-election to a second a term, 58-41. Pennsylvania will have a new lieutenant governor in Wolf’s running mate John Fetterman, current mayor of an aging steel town who previously ran for US Senate. The Wolf/Fetterman ticket beat out Republican challenger, former PA Senator Scott Wagner and his running mate, developer Jeff Bartos.

Overall, we do not see any change in the Governor’s agenda, but expect him to propose increased taxes to expand programs he has proposed over the last four years.

PA saw a record 27 legislators who did not seek re-election and 5 incumbent loose their primary, most notably, the Democratic Lt. Governor who served in the Senate for two terms and then elected with Gov. Wolf in 2014.

In the PA Senate, Republicans lost five seats from their 34-16 majority, but still will still maintain a majority in the upcoming 2019-20 Legislative Session with a 29-21 edge. One Republican lost after serving 15 years and another, who served 3 years, won an open seat to the US Congress. No losses in leadership.

Republican dominance in the PA State House has changed with Democrats picking up eleven seats, mostly in southeastern Pa.

Republicans will have 110 members to the Democrats’ 93, less than half of the party’s current 120-to-83 majority. There were no losses in majority leadership, but there will be a new House Majority Leader with the current leader not seeking re-election.

Republicans ousted two Democratic incumbents and picked up the seat of the retiring Minority Whip.

Democrats picked up 13 seats – 9 seats from GOP incumbents and the other 4 were open seats where the Republican State Rep. retired.

It will be a few months before Democrats field a full caucus with special elections needed to be held with the recent passing of two members and another who was convicted in recent weeks of crimes related to accepting a bribe.

There will be committee chairs changing in both the Republican Senate and House. These positions will not be determined until January of 2019.