Apr 5, 2019 3 min read

If you’re a Democrat who thinks that Pam Iovino’s victory over D. Raja in Tuesday’s special election to fill the vacant 37th District state Senate seat is a sign that even greater victories are to come next year in Southwestern Pennsylvania, you might want to cool your jets.

Since President Trump’s extremely strong showing in this area in 2016, Democrats have enjoyed some high-profile wins, but each victory has to be viewed more than as just the black and white of vote totals.

In 2018, Democrat Conor Lamb claimed victory in a special election over Republican state lawmaker Rick Saccone to fill the remainder of the then-18th District congressional term of Rep. Tim Murphy, who had resigned amid an adultery scandal.

Lamb ran as a moderate Democrat in that race and benefited from the fact that Saccone, let’s face it, did not run the greatest of races and came in a distant second in the charisma category.

By the time of the next round of U.S. House races, the districts had been reconfigured, with Washington, Greene, Fayette and part of Westmoreland County in the new 14th District. With no incumbent in that race, Republican state Sen. Guy Reschenthaler easily defeated Democrat Bibiana Boerio. We’d venture a prediction that had Republican leaders chosen Reschenthaler as their standard bearer in the earlier 18th District special election, he would have stood a very good chance of defeating Lamb and keeping the seat in Republican hands.

As it worked out, Lamb ran last year for a full term in the newly created 17th Congressional District and rolled past incumbent Republican Keith Rothfus in a district that had been crafted to be much more hospitable to Democratic candidates.

Which brings us back to the Iovino-Raja race. Despite being painted as an extreme liberal by the Raja campaign, Iovino had a sterling background in the U.S. Navy and was nominated to a post in the Veterans Administration by Republican President George W. Bush. In other words, it was a tough hill to climb to paint her as a wild-eyed leftist.

Thanks to her strength in Allegheny County, Iovino defeated Raja by a margin of about 54 percent to 46 percent. But in the Republican stronghold of Peters Township, the only municipality in Washington County that is part of the 37th District, Raja enjoyed a comfortable vote margin of 3,826 to 2,221.

Raja played up his life story as a first-generation immigrant who was educated in this area and stayed here to create and build a successful tech business. Of this, he should be proud. But we’d be avoiding the obvious if we didn’t recognize that there still are many people among us in this region who would be loathe to vote for someone who hails from another country and is a person of color. Much as some might deny it, racism is still far too pervasive in our neck of the woods.

Trying to take the outcome of the Iovino-Raja race and make it a harbinger of what will happen in the 2020 election, when congressional races will again be on the ballot and President Trump presumably will be seeking another four-year term, is not a proposition we’re going to get behind.

Too much can happen over the next 19 months for us to be sure about how anything is going to play out in November 2020. Democrats can celebrate their victories, but our guess is that this corner of Southwestern Pennsylvania will still be “Trump country” in the next big election.