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GOP won’t back down from Pennsylvania’s 18th district

The NRCC is asking Republican voters to report any issues at the polls.

Republican candidate Rick Saccone. CREDIT: Ty Wright/Bloomberg via Getty Image
Republican candidate Rick Saccone. CREDIT: Ty Wright/Bloomberg via Getty Image

After a close election night Tuesday, Democratic candidate Conor Lamb was officially elected to Pennsylvania’s 18th congressional district — a district that will cease to exist in nine months thanks to the state’s gerrymandering fight.

In spite of this, the GOP won’t back down.

The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), the fundraising arm for House Republicans, is reaching out to Republicans in the district to see if they experienced any problems at their polling locations. First reported by The Hill, the GOP’s outreach to voters in the district is in the form of Facebook ads instructing some 200,000 Republican voters to contact the NRCC if they faced problems while they cast ballots.

“URGENT: Are you a Republican that tried voting in the March 13 special election but faced issues at your polling location? If so, we need to hear from you! The election depends on it,” the ad reads.
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Through the ad, voters can click to send a message to the NRCC’s legal defense program and will receive a response from one of the organization’s lawyers.
According to The Hill, NRCC has received more than 50 responses already.
This last-ditch effort by Republicans comes as the party is gearing up to possibly challenge Tuesday’s results for the Republican candidate, Rick Saccone. Saccone’s campaign has already instructed the four counties that make up Pennsylvania’s 18th district to keep the ballots and voting machines, a signal he is preparing for a potential recount following the close special election.
Lamb was officially declared the winner Wednesday afternoon after a final vote count. He won by just 627 votes.
The 18th district was seen as an essential win for the Republicans, given that it went for Trump in the 2016 presidential election by 20 points. Lamb’s win was a tremendous loss for both the Republican Party and President Donald Trump, whose policies Saccone was very much in line with. Trump gave Saccone a whole-hearted endorsement in the weeks leading up to the race, even holding a rally for the candidate days before election day.
Republicans have not been able to explain why the party took such a loss, changing it’s story on Lamb soon after election day. In late February, the Republican National Committee noted his opposition to a 20-week abortion ban and called him “drastically out of touch with values of southwest Pennsylvania.” Wednesday morning, however, the Republican National Committee and its supporters reversed course and seized on a false talking point that Lamb’s victory was unusual because he was “pro-life” and basically ran as a Republican.
The morning after the election, Fox and Friends co-host Steve Doocy said that Lamb only won because he is “cute.”
Because the district will not exist under the Supreme Court’s new maps, Lamb and Saccone will both be forced to run again in separate districts in just nine months time. Lamb is expected to run in the 17th district, while Saccone has reportedly already begun to collect petitions for a new district that will include the majority of the old 18th district.