Democrats Have Path to Keeping Control of US House, Pennsylvania Lawmaker Says

Laura Davison
·2 min read
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(Bloomberg) -- Democrats increasingly have a path toward keeping their House majority, despite being “underdogs” this cycle, Representative Brendan Boyle said.

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Boyle, a Pennsylvania Democrat, said that Democrats’ odds of winning a majority this November keep ticking up as energy prices decline and the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision to allow states to restrict abortion access has motivated voters to support Democrats.

“This has been the strangest election cycle that I can ever remember,” Boyle, who won his House seat representing parts of Philadelphia and the surrounding area in 2014, said in an interview with Bloomberg reporters and editors Thursday. “Things did change with the Dobbs decision and every special election since then Democrats have over-performed, literally the exact opposite of what was happening before.”

Democrats earlier this year were projected to almost certainly lose their House majority and potentially their edge in the Senate, which party leaders were attributing to unfavorable redistricting as well as historical trends for the president’s party to lose seats in the mid-terms.

But since the June abortion decision, Democrats have racked up a series of upsets, including New York Democrat Pat Ryan winning a tossup election focused on reproductive health care, Alaska Democrat Mary Peltola winning a special election for a House seat long held by Republicans, and Kansans affirming abortion rights by a wide margin in a state-wide vote.

Boyle, who comes from one of the most politically divided states in the country, said Democrats are also likely to prevail in the Pennsylvania governor’s race. He predicted Josh Shapiro, a former state attorney general, would beat Doug Mastriano, a state politician who was outside the US Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection.

Boyle said that Republican voters have helped Democrats in governors races, as well as in congressional contests, by selecting ultra-conservative nominees.

“Republicans have picked their most extreme, hardest-to-elect candidates,” he said. “They have frankly given us a real assist in terms of who they’ve nominated.”

During an earlier interview on Bloomberg Television’s “Balance of Power” with Joe Mathieu, Boyle highlighted Pennsylvania’s status as a pivotal swing state and one in which Democrats must secure victories in November. “As Pennsylvania goes, so goes the nation,” he said.

Boyle is likely to easily win re-election this November. He won the 2020 general election with 72.5% of the vote.

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