Not much about tomorrow's special election in Pennsylvania's 18th congressional district, in the southwest corner of the state, has been underreported, but a plausible candidate would be why there is a special election in the first place. It's because the incumbent, Tim Murphy, a Republican who was first elected to the seat in 2002 and was then reelected seven consecutive times, twice without opposition and never with less than 58% of the vote, resigned last fall. His resignation was triggered by the revelation of an extramarital affair that had a few extras in the eyebrow raising department. First, the cliché about "twice her age" was not in this case an exaggeration: Murphy was 64, his girlfriend, 32. Second, journalists, once on the scent of a scandal, had no problem finding ex-staffers willing to say unflattering things about the congressman, so the floodgates were opening. Third, and probably most damaging, one of the empty cans floating on the dirty water of Murphy's reputation was news of a pregnancy scare that had caused the gallant congressman to urge his lover to have an abortion. Of course he's "pro-life." The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the congressman's hometown newspaper, got the text messages.
Girlfriend: [Y]ou have zero issue posting your pro-life stance all over the place when you had no issue asking me to abort our unborn child just last week when we thought that was one of the options.
Congressman Murphy: I get what you say about my March for life messages. I've never written them. Staff does them. I read them and winced. I told staff don't write anymore.
Four, though by now it probably barely registered, he's the kind who puts off his own failings on the people who work for him. Everyone's wincing, Congressman.
I mention this mainly because I saw on tv this morning one of those reports featuring on-the-street interviews with voters. Two were middle-aged women who said they usually voted Republican. When asked their impressions of the Democratic candidate, Conor Lamb, one used the phrase (if memory serves) "right off mom's menu" and the other said he was "the real deal," a "straight arrow." Lamb, 33, is a former federal prosecutor and marine of moderate views whose opponent, Rick Saccone, has said of himself, "I was Trump before Trump was Trump"--which I actually love for the possibly unintended suggestion that Trump is playing himself.
Anyway, it's true, as the journalists endlessly remind us, that the district's strong Republican slant is being tested by Trump's unpopularity and the fact that the Democrats have a good candidate. But I wonder, too, whether the stain attaching to the district's longtime Republican representative isn't also giving Lamb a boost. He's probably married, but if he isn't those Republican women interviewed on tv this morning might like to introduce him to the last congressman's girlfriend. She could do better.
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