In the 9th District, support Shuster
Bill Shuster and Art Halvorson just can’t seem to shake each other.
Like a couple in some horribly dysfunctional relationship, they keep brawling and snarling, sniping and battling. And just when you think it’s over, it all roars back to life yet again.
Shuster, the congressman representing Pennsylvania’s heavily-Republican 9th Congressional District since 2001, first faced Halvorson, a far-right, tea party firebrand and a former Coast Guard captain, in the 2014 primary election and narrowly defeated him. A rematch in this spring’s primary produced the same result. However, Halvorson won enough write-in votes in the uncontested Democratic primary to earn the party’s nomination in the district, even if he is about as diametrically opposed to the ideological goals of today’s Democratic Party as a candidate can possibly be. He is clearly hoping that the third face-off will be the charm.
In the spring, we noted that voters in the sprawling 9th District, which stretches from the eastern edges of Washington and Greene counties to Chambersburg in the east and Altoona and Indiana in the north, faced a deeply uninspiring choice in Shuster and Halvorson. Shuster has generated headlines by dating a lobbyist for an airline trade association, even as he chairs the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, which oversees the airline industry. To make matters worse, it was widely reported earlier this year that Shuster enjoyed a Florida getaway with his girlfriend and her boss at the trade association, just days after her boss testified before Shuster’s committee about a proposal to privatize America’s air traffic control system. It’s enough to make Shuster’s constituents wonder who exactly he is working for.
But Halvorson is not an acceptable alternative. Pounding away at a deeply pessimistic, midnight-in-America message that the country is in need of “rescue,” Halvorson supports discriminatory, Trump-style measures that would ban citizens from 25 majority Muslim nations from entering the United States. That by itself should be disqualifying. He also holds a number of other worrying views about health care, trade and guns.
Shuster is the best option for voters in the 9th District. But they deserve better. Hopefully more suitable candidates will step forward in 2018.
In Washington County, the 9th Congressional District includes Monongahela, Carroll, East Bethlehem townships and part of Fallowfield Township, plus Allenport, Bentleyville, California, Centerville, Charleroi, Coal Center, Donora, Dunlevy, Elco, Long Branch, New Eagle, North Charleroi, Roscoe, Speers, Stockdale, Twilight and West Brownsville.
In Greene County, the district includes Carmichaels, Clarksville, Greensboro, Jefferson and Rices Landing, plus Cumberland Dunkard, Greene, Jefferson and Monongahela townships and the Chartiers/Teagarden and Mather neighborhoods of Morgan Township.