A Democrat Just Flipped a Pennsylvania District That Trump Won by 15 Points

No one likes Donald Trump. Too bad voters in key states and districts realized that about…five months too late.

Politics
A Democrat Just Flipped a Pennsylvania District That Trump Won by 15 Points

It’s about five months too late, but voters in red and swing districts across the country are just now remembering that, actually, Donald Trump is the worst. In a stunning upset on Tuesday night, a Democrat flipped a deep-red Pennsylvania state Senate district that Trump won by 15 points in November. James Malone previously served as mayor of East Petersburg, but ran to replace state Sen. Ryan Aument (R) in Senate District 36 for the rest of his term, since Aument left in January to work for U.S. Sen. Dave McCormick (R). Malone defeated Republican Lancaster County Commissioner Josh Parsons for the seat by just 500 votes, as of early Wednesday.

“Everyday voters are not liking what they’re seeing at the federal level, they don’t like the chaos. We want to be sure that we, as Pennsylvania, are standing up for our neighbors and are standing up for our state,” Malone told WGAL-TV. “And, brotherly love is Pennsylvania, and that just proved out. … I’m very excited and really, really happy that all the work we put in has paid off,”

Malone’s Tuesday victory cuts the GOP’s slim state Senate majority to 27-23. Meanwhile, on Tuesday, Dan Goughnour won the vacant seat for state House District 35, left open after the late Rep. Matt Gergely (D) died in January. Kamala Harris won 58% of the vote in District 35 in November, and it’s long been a safely Democratic district. But before Gergely’s death, Democrats held only a one-seat majority. With Goughnour’s victory, they’ll just manage to hold on to it.

On Tuesday night, one conservative influencer shared a screenshot of the state Senate District 36 results on Twitter and wrote, “I asked for help in Pennsylvania & no one helped us.” Elon Musk, who currently bankrolls and owns the Republican Party, replied, “Damn.” Hopefully, this is foreshadowing for next week’s Wisconsin Supreme Court election, which Musk has poured millions into to help get the conservative candidate elected.

Over the last several months, Democrats on the state and local level have shown signs of momentum, even as Democrats on the federal level are floundering in their response to the authoritarian Trump administration. In January, for instance, Democrats won another special election for a deep-red state Senate seat in Iowa. Since November, Democratic candidates have won mayoral elections in deep-red cities, and early polling shows key state legislative seats in competitive state legislatures like Virginia’s starting to lean Democratic. The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee points to these and other early victories as signs that Democrats, on the state level, are over-performing: “It’s only March, and Democrats have defied the odds again with another upset victory in Republican territory,” the group’s president, Heather Williams, said. “Democrats are on a roll in state legislative races in 2025, from flipping red seats to defending one-seat majorities, which should put Republicans on edge.”

In a statement, DNC Chair Ken Martin characterized Malone’s victory as “a loud and clear rebuke to Republicans’ threats to the programs Pennsylvania families rely on—from Social Security and Medicaid to our public schools. … In special elections throughout the country, we continue to overperform as voters join us in fighting back against the Trump-Musk agenda.” Martin called Malone’s victory “a shockwave to the system and the way Republicans have run our government. Republicans everywhere should be afraid.”

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D), who’s become the face of this era of the Democratic Party’s resistance to the Trump administration, also hailed Malone’s win: “This is how it’s done. Run everywhere. Run down ballot. Focus on local elections ASAP—from school board to councils to state legislatures,” she tweeted early Wednesday. “We build from there.” Over the last month, Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) have drawn record-shattering crowds to rallies in red parts of states like Arizona and Colorado. 

Trump won with the slimmest popular vote margin in over a century, and has spent the last two months hacking away at some of the most popular public programs in the country, all as prices continue to soar, just about everything gets worse, and Musk does interview after interview threatening to cut even more programs. If Democrats up and down the ballot are willing to actually show up and fight right now, they have all the momentum—it’s up to them to get out of their own way.

 
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