Mar 4, 2018 10 min read

Agree or not, midterm congressional elections tend to be viewed as a referendum on the performance of the occupant of the White House.

In a district held since 2003 by Republican Tim Murphy, Republican state Rep. Rick Saccone might be viewed as a shoo-in. Both President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, who handily bested Hillary Clinton and running mate Sen. Tim Kaine in 2016, have campaigned here on Saccone’s behalf.

And Joseph DiSarro, head of Washington & Jefferson College political science department, called the 18th District “tailor-made” to keep sending incumbent Republican Tim Murphy to Washington, D.C., even though registered Democrats outnumber Republicans in the district.

But a March 13 special election was necessitated by Murphy’s resignation in October after an adultery scandal came to light.

Several polls in February placed Democrat Conor Lamb just a few percentage points behind Saccone and within the statistical margin of error.

Cook Political Report last week rated the race “toss up,” when it had been “lean Republican.”

Former Vice President Joe Biden announced he’s making a campaign appearance on Lamb’s behalf.

The winner of what may be the last election within 18th District lines drawn after the 2010 U.S. Census will serve the rest of the final year of Murphy’s term.

“You know, for some people it might be a referendum on the president,” Saccone said in an interview. “In our district, President Trump won by, like, 20 points.

“I think he’s still very popular, so if it is, I think it benefits me because I follow the same agenda. For other people, I hope they look at the person and again, if they do, I think I win again because I’m stronger in my resume, background and experience. Either way, I think I should win.”

Saccone maintains his oft-repeated line, “I was Trump before Trump was Trump,” was made tongue-in-cheek, but his campaign also nationalizes the race, linking his opponent to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.

Lamb counterpunched with an advertisement that shows him on the record not backing the leadership of Pelosi, a Democrat from San Francisco.

“This is generational,” Lamb said. “l think we need new people in there,” a view he said he’s heard from both Democrats and Republicans and applying both to Pelosi and Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, a Republican from Janesville, Wis.

Saccone, an 18-year U.S. Air Force veteran who has written two books about North Korea stemming from a year he spent there as a private citizen, stressed his experience in foreign affairs, counter-terrorism and counter-intelligence, as a college professor and in the energy sector.

“These are committees I could actually have some impact on right away,” he said.

“Veterans affairs is something close to my heart,” he said, noting that military service in his family goes back generations and continues with his two sons, one of whom is serving in South Korea.

The debate over gun violence was interjected into the campaign with the Feb. 14 mass shooting in Parkland, Fla., which killed 17 students and teachers.

“We’ve created gun-free zones where people are basically victims. It just makes people sitting ducks,” Saccone said. “This guy (Nicholas Cruz) broke, like, 12 laws to do what he did.”

Saccone said any approach to preventing future attacks has to be multi-pronged.

The government “should’ve flagged him on his background investigation,” Saccone said. “We have to make sure reporting is done. We have a pretty good background check.”

Saccone was interviewed before Dick’s Sporting Goods and Walmart announced they would raise the age for firearms purchases to 21, when federal law places the minimum age at 18, but he said, “I’m willing to listen to that debate.”

In his role as a federal prosecutor, Lamb said he has come to see turning the tide on the opioid epidemic as his No. 1 issue.

“I’ve sat with parents who were trying to save their own sons and daughters,” he said. “I think we need to act fast to build new facilities with beds in them where people can stay for 90 days, not 30 days, where they can get health insurance for years afterward and medically assisted treatments.

“I think it’s going to be a major undertaking. It’s going to be very expensive. It’s going to be very difficult, but to me this is a national security threat. It’s going to blow a huge hole in my generation.”

He called the opioid issue a “$50 billion to $100 billion problem, at least,” that will require cash from the federal government because “our states and cities are strapped right now. It’s on us to do something to cut into the demand here.”

Lamb also called infrastructure improvement “the pressing economic challenge of our time” and said of Trump’s plan, “It’s a start. I’m very concerned from the engineers and businessmen that I’ve talked to who don’t feel that $200 billion is nearly enough to get the private sector interested.

“It’s just hard for private investors to make money on tunnels, locks and dams and bridges. With the huge problem with our bridges here, we don’t want to see every one of those tolled. We need the government to do its job on these things, so I think the package is going to have to be much bigger.”

Lamb, who was a U.S. Marine Corps captain, said of the tragedy at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School, “We can’t have a Congress in D.C. that continues to do nothing. That is intolerable, and it’s too dismissive of what our people are feeling right now.

“Having worked very closely with the FBI and the (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms) on gun cases, the information that the store owner sees when they do the background check is limited and incomplete, and that is partially the result of the gun lobby over the years attacking not just the laws themselves but the agency budgets and the way these programs are run. This really is a patchwork system that hasn’t been run right. We’re going to need to hold hearings to make sure better information comes up on that screen on the issues of mental health, on the issues of people who have committed crimes before and how you get that into the system but still protect the privacy of those who are getting treatment. All of that is difficult.”

Because the March 13 contest is a special election, not a primary, all registered voters are eligible to cast ballots, and when they do, they’ll see not two candidates’ names, but three.

Libertarian Drew Gray Miller, 37, of Pittsburgh’s South Side, rounds out the field.

Miller described himself as fiscally conservative and socially liberal. He worked for a former state senator.

Miller said he gained legislative experience, which he said Lamb lacks, and that he, unlike Saccone, is a lawyer, making him uniquely qualified in the race.

Miller said he thinks anyone should be able to purchase any gun they want.

“There are people dying every day from guns, and people aren’t talking about it,” Miller said, noting the focus on mass-casualty events with student victims.

“I don’t necessarily think it’s the guns, themselves, that are causing the shootings,” he continued.

“School mass shootings committed by young men and not young women tells me there’s something psychological going on or something culturally going on in the minds of young men. We have to find out what that is and try to correct it.”

He advocated for better access to psychologists and psychiatrists, coupled with insurance coverage.

Miller lives outside the currently configured 18th Congressional District but has worked at both a Southpointe law firm and Shale Land Services in the South Hills. He said he understands how vital the oil and natural gas industry is to the district.

On matters of policy, Miller favors getting rid of federal income tax and loopholes and instead have a 15 to 20 percent national consumption tax, including a “prebate” to low-income people to offset what they would pay on their purchases.

He called for an end to foreign aid and foreign wars, closure of overseas military bases and bringing all troops home.

He branded Social Security “a well-organized Ponzi scheme,” but said, “Eliminating it would create even bigger problems.”

Miller called for recreational marijuana use to be legalized nationwide.

Voters in the May 15 primary may be seeing a spate of candidates seeking major-party nominations inside new boundaries for two-year terms beginning in 2019, depending on federal court intervention in response to the state Supreme Court’s imposition of a new congressional map.

Regardless of the outcome of the March 13 election, and barring any last-minute changes ordered by the federal courts, voters in Washington, Greene, Westmoreland and part of Allegheny County will be seeing Saccone’s name on their primary ballots May 15.

Saccone said he’ll be running for a two-year term here in the new 14th District rather than in the new 18th District where the Saccone family home in Elizabeth Township is located, part of the area he shares with incumbent Democratic U.S. Rep. Mike Doyle of Pittsburgh.

Under the Pennsylvania Supreme Court map, Lamb’s home in Mt. Lebanon is part of the redrawn 17th District in an area represented by Republican U.S. Rep. Keith Rothfus, but Lamb would not disclose his plans beyond the special election.

The filing deadline for the two-year congressional term beginning in early 2019 is not until Tuesday, March 20, a week after the special election.

Congressional candidates do not have to live within a district where they run as long as they meet other legal requirements.

“I’m only concerned about my people of the 18th District,” Lamb said. Asked if he plans to take on Rothfus in the 17th District, the Democrat said, “I’ve not given it any thought at all.”

Miller, a Pittsburgh resident who lives outside the 18th District boundaries for the special election, but inside the newly configured, Pittsburgh-based 18th District, said he’d consider running in the new 18th District for the two-year term.

“It might be worth trying to take on Doyle,” Miller said.

Lamb said he’s “going to continue to run no matter where they draw these lines, and I have no control over that. We’ll see what happens in court.”

Democrat

Name: Conor Lamb

Age: 33 

Residence: Mt. Lebanon

Education: Undergraduate and law degree, University of Pennsylvania

Occupation: Former federal prosecutor

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Libertarian

Name: Drew Gray Miller

Age: 37

Residence: Pittsburgh

Education: Bachelor’s degree, Syracuse (N.Y.) University; Law degree, Widener University 

Occupation: Attorney

–

Republican

Name: Rick Saccone

Age: 60 

Residence: Elizabeth Township

Education: Ph.D., University of Pittsburgh; MS Naval Postgraduate School; Master’s degree in public administration, University of Oklahoma; BS Weber State College 

Occupation: State legislator, 39th District