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      Surprise in Pennsylvania: Republicans Back a (Former?) Democrat for Speaker

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      Representative Mark Rozzi, long a moderate Democrat, pledged not to caucus with either party as speaker of the closely divided state House of Representatives. Many questions remain.HARRISBURG, Pa. — The new legislative session began at noon on Tuesday, and despite the cheery bouquets and wide-eyed family members, the statehouse was humming with nervous anticipation. For weeks, it had been unclear which party could claim a majority in the state House of Representatives: the Democrats won more seats in November, but because of a death and two resignations, the Republicans had more members for now.The election of a speaker, the new House’s first piece of business, was going to put this fiercely debated question to the test.After a long afternoon of suspense, and to the surprise of nearly everyone in the House, the choice was made: a moderate Democrat from the Reading area, nominated by two Republicans, who was on almost no one’s radar and who pledged in his first speech to be “the commonwealth’s first independent speaker.”“I’m sure a lot of you didn’t see this coming today,” the new speaker, Representative Mark Rozzi, said at the rostrum.Harrisburg is not the only capital where the mere act of deciding who is in charge has proved fraught in the early days of the new year. Before the session in Pennsylvania began, the repeated botched attempts by Republicans in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday to elect a speaker in the U.S. House of Representatives were playing out on televisions in the Pennsylvania statehouse. Meanwhile, Democratic state representatives next door in Ohio helped elect a Republican House speaker there who is not as conservative as the candidate backed by most Republicans in their supermajority.The fights in Washington and Ohio were ideological, but the maneuvering in Pennsylvania was largely about strategy, given the bizarre circumstances leading up to Tuesday’s vote. Democrats outperformed expectations on Election Day in Pennsylvania, winning a U.S. Senate seat, the governor’s office and, perhaps most surprising of all, control of the state House, where they had been out of power for more than a decade.It was only a one-seat majority, though, and one of the winning candidates had died a few weeks before the November election. Then, in early December, two Democrats who had been re-elected to the House and at the same time had been elected to higher offices resigned their House seats.At issue in the weeks that followed was whether “majority” meant the party that the voters in the most districts had chosen, or the party that had the most members at the moment the session began. The Democrats argued for the former, the Republicans the latter. The question was put to the courts, even as Republicans and Democrats held dueling swearing-in ceremonies last month for House majority leader.Democrats are heavily favored to win the special elections to fill the three vacant seats, but the first of those votes won’t take place until at least Feb. 7. So the looming question as the session opened Tuesday was which party would control the House for now, while Republicans have a 101-99 advantage.Few lawmakers, it seemed, began the day Tuesday thinking of Mr. Rozzi as a candidate for speaker. Members recited the Pledge of Allegiance at a swearing-in ceremony.Matt Smith/Associated PressThe significance was not just symbolic, even in a state where power was already divided, with a Republican-controlled State Senate and a Democratic governor. Republicans hoped to vote on several constitutional amendments that would not require Gov. Josh Shapiro’s signature; one would require voters to show identification at the polls and another would give the legislature the power to reject regulations put in place by the executive branch. Democrats were worried that the Republicans would also change the rules of the House if they briefly won control, making it hard to elect a new speaker after the Democrats retook the majority.Caucuses and party leaders gathered all morning on Tuesday to discuss strategy, talks that continued in the afternoon in smaller huddles on the House floor. A vote to adjourn without picking a speaker deadlocked at 100-100, with one Republican voting with the Democrats.Then the clerk called for nominations for speaker. What came next were a series of surprises. First, Representative Jim Gregory, a Republican representing a district outside Altoona, stood and named Mr. Rozzi, a Democrat.“As we are gathered in this chamber today, we must look at our razor-thin majorities,” Mr. Gregory said, urging the members to put “people over politics.” Then another lawmaker, the Republican House whip, seconded the nomination.All eyes turned toward the Democrats, and specifically toward Representative Joanna McClinton, the Democratic leader, who had been expected to become the first Black woman to serve as speaker of the Pennsylvania House. Ms. McClinton announced that she supported the nomination of Mr. Rozzi.With 16 Republicans, including party leaders, joining all of the Democrats, Mr. Rozzi won the speakership, defeating a traditionally conservative Republican who only minutes earlier had been the presumptive Republican choice.Virtually no one in the House other than Mr. Gregory and Mr. Rozzi, it seemed, had recognized Mr. Rozzi as a candidate when the day began. Mr. Gregory said afterward that he raised the idea with Republican leaders shortly before nominating him on the floor. Mr. Gregory had developed a good working relationship with Mr. Rozzi, but he also saw nominating him as a way to outflank an almost assured Democratic majority.“Here in Pennsylvania, we play two different games: Some people play checkers, and some people play chess,” Mr. Gregory said after the vote. “And I think what you just witnessed is a Democrat member who was in the majority leave the majority to go independent.”As the Republicans saw it, Mr. Rozzi’s move would mean that the Democrats could not achieve a majority even after the special elections. In the halls of the capitol afterward, Republicans mulled how such an evenly split House would operate: who would control committees, for example, and how they would be divvied up.But it had all happened so quickly that on Wednesday, there were far more questions than answers. Mr. Rozzi, who has been a reliable moderate Democrat during his tenure in the House, is best known for his efforts on behalf of victims of childhood sexual abuse. Having spoken openly of being raped by a priest as a child, Mr. Rozzi sponsored, along with Mr. Gregory, a constitutional amendment allowing victims to sue their abusers long after criminal statutes had expired. Mr. Rozzi pushed for a bill to extend the statute of limitations for sexual abuse cases, an issue he discussed in 2016 with the governor at the time, Tom Wolf.Nicole Bengiveno/The New York TimesIf the House and Senate vote on it early in the new session, that amendment could be on the ballot as soon as this May. Mr. Gregory said that making sure the House moved quickly on the amendment was the main reason that he and Mr. Rozzi had begun discussing their plan for the speakership.While Mr. Rozzi did emphasize in his initial remarks before the House that he aimed to be an independent speaker, pledging not to caucus with either party, it remained unclear what that would mean in practice.In a private meeting with Democrats after the vote on Tuesday, Mr. Rozzi assured them that he still considered himself a Democrat, comments first reported by SpotlightPA, a state news outlet, and confirmed by a Democratic House member.In response, the House Republican leader, Representative Bryan Cutler, said in a statement that Republicans “continue to believe what he committed to publicly in his address and what he promised to our leaders privately about fully becoming an Independent has not changed.”On Tuesday evening, after hours of hushed meetings, Mr. Rozzi briefly addressed a crowd of reporters in the capitol rotunda who were hungry for any information that would make sense of the day’s events.“I look forward to talking to you more about my plans as speaker, but such a heavy discussion deserves considered forethought,” the new House speaker of the fifth-largest state said, standing in the glare of spotlights at a hastily assembled lectern. “And as this was unexpected, I will be making no further comments tonight. Thank you.”Many of the lingering questions may not be answered until the House reconvenes, at a time to be set by the speaker. As of Wednesday afternoon, no date had been announced. More

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      How the Worst Fears for Democracy Were Averted in 2022

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      A precariously narrow but consequential slice of the electorate broke with its own voting history to reject openly extremist Republican candidates — at least partly out of concern for the health of the political system.Not long ago, Joe Mohler would have seemed an unlikely person to help bury the political legacy of Donald J. Trump.Mr. Mohler, a 24-year-old Republican committeeman and law student in Lancaster Township, Pa., voted for Mr. Trump in 2016. He voted for him again in 2020 — but this time with some misgivings. And when Mr. Trump began spouting lies and conspiracy theories about his 2020 loss, Mr. Mohler, who grew up in a solidly conservative area of southeastern Pennsylvania, was troubled to hear many people he knew repeat them.Last January, after county Republican leaders aligned with a group known for spreading misinformation about the 2020 election and Covid-19 vaccines, Mr. Mohler spoke out against them — a move that he said cost him his post as chairman of the township G.O.P. committee.“I just realized how much of a sham the whole movement was,” he said. “The moment the veil is pulled from your face, you realize how ugly the face is that you are looking at.”Mr. Mohler was part of a precariously narrow but consequential slice of the electorate that went against its own voting history this year in order to reject Republican candidates who sought control over elections, at least in part out of concern for the health of the political system and the future of democracy.After deciding that preserving the integrity of elections was his single most important issue in 2022, he voted last month for the party’s nominee for Senate, Mehmet Oz, who hedged carefully on the question of who won the 2020 election but eventually said he would have voted to certify Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory had he been in office. But in the governor’s race, Mr. Mohler decided he could not vote for Doug Mastriano, the Republican candidate, who as a state senator was central to efforts to overturn Pennsylvania’s 2020 election results. Mr. Mastriano had pledged to decertify voting machines in counties where he suspected the results were fraudulent and to appoint as secretary of the commonwealth, the office overseeing elections in Pennsylvania, someone who shared his views.“It was just so reprehensible,” Mr. Mohler said. “I didn’t want anybody like that in the governor’s office.”Doug Mastriano, a leader in the movement to investigate and overturn the 2020 election, was defeated in the Pennsylvania governor’s race.Mark Makela for The New York TimesThe decisions of voters like Mr. Mohler, discernible in surveys and voiced in interviews, did not necessarily lay to rest concerns about the ability of the election system to withstand the new pressures unleashed upon it by Mr. Trump. But they did suggest a possible ceiling on the appeal of extreme partisanship — one that prevented, in this cycle, the worst fears for the health of democracy from being realized. Mr. Mastriano lost by nearly 15 percentage points to the Democratic candidate, Josh Shapiro — part of a midterm election that saw voters reject every election denier running to oversee elections in a battleground state. In Arizona, Michigan and Nevada, Republican primary voters nominated candidates campaigning on Mr. Trump’s election lies for secretary of state, the office that in 40 states oversees the election system. In all three, those candidates lost. The rout eased the immediate concern that strident partisans who embraced conspiracy theories about hacked voting machines, foreign meddling and smuggled ballots might soon be empowered to wreak havoc on election systems.The election results suggest that a focus on Mr. Trump’s election lies did not merely galvanize Democrats but also alienated Republicans and independents. Final turnout figures show registered Republicans cast more ballots than registered Democrats in Arizona and Nevada, but election-denying candidates nevertheless lost important races in each of those states.Republican candidates in statewide contests who embraced Mr. Trump’s election lies also significantly underperformed compared with Republicans who did not. This was true even in districts that voted overwhelmingly for Mr. Trump in 2020, suggesting that the defection of ticket-splitters like Mr. Mohler likely played a role.In a survey of voters in five battleground states conducted by the research firm Citizen Data for the advocacy group Protect Democracy, a third who cast ballots for a mix of Democrats and Republicans in November cited a concern that G.O.P. candidates held views or promoted policies “that are dangerous to democracy.” The Aftermath of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6A moment of reflection. More

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      Which Party Controls the Pennsylvania House? It’s TBD.

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      Three seats won by Democrats in November are now vacant, giving Republicans more House members for now and sowing uncertainty ahead of the legislative session.More than a month after the elections in Pennsylvania, which were among the most closely watched in the country, a question remains unanswered in the state’s House of Representatives: Who, exactly, is in charge?For now, both the Democratic and Republican parties are claiming a majority in the chamber, and representatives from both parties have declared themselves the House majority leader. Both are accusing the other party of ignoring the will of the voters, the rule of law or some combination thereof. With the House set to reconvene, and presumably to choose a speaker in less than three weeks, the question now sits with the courts.Election Day was largely disappointing for Pennsylvania Republicans, who fell short in the race for governor, and, with the victory of John Fetterman, the generously tattooed Democrat, lost their seat in the U.S. Senate.Democrats also won a majority of seats in the State House for the first time in a dozen years, even as Republicans maintained control of the State Senate. But the margin in the House appeared to be wafer-thin, 102-101, decided by fewer than 65 votes in a race in the Philadelphia suburbs. It turned out to be even more tenuous — one of the victorious lawmakers was dead.In early October, Anthony DeLuca, 85, a Democrat who represented a district in the Pittsburgh suburbs and was the longest-serving member of the House, died of complications from lymphoma. His death occurred too close to the election to replace his name on the ballot, and, a month later, he was re-elected in a landslide.Republicans saw a stalemate. Until a special election could be held in Mr. DeLuca’s district, they reasoned, each party had 101 representatives, and neither could claim a majority in the House.An opinion issued last Wednesday by the Pennsylvania Legislative Reference Bureau, a nonpartisan advisory body, seemed to concur. “Under current law, an individual must at least be elected and living to qualify as a member of a legislative caucus,” the opinion concluded, adding that “the House Democratic Caucus falls short of the 102 members necessary for a majority.”That same day, two Democratic representatives who had won their House races but who, in the same election, had been voted into higher office — Summer Lee, now an incoming U.S. congresswoman, and Austin Davis, Pennsylvania’s lieutenant governor-elect — formally resigned their House seats. Republicans concluded that they now had a majority outright, at least until special elections took place for all three seats.Democrats saw things differently. Voters had chosen Democratic representatives in 102 of the state’s 203 districts, they said, and by particularly overwhelming margins in the three seats that are now vacant.“We won 102 districts compared to the Republicans’ 101,” Joanna McClinton, the House Democratic leader — and, according to her, the majority leader — said in an interview. “It’s a fact, it’s indisputable.”Within hours of her two fellow Democrats’ resignations last week, Ms. McClinton was sworn into office in an otherwise empty House chamber. She then scheduled elections for all three of the vacant seats on Feb. 7, the earliest date possible under state rules, and Pennsylvania’s acting secretary of state, a Democrat, signed off on the plan.Republicans were livid, accusing the Democrats of having staged a “paperwork insurrection.” Within days, Representative Brian Cutler, the leader of the House Republicans, sued the secretary of state, arguing that Ms. McClinton was not the House majority leader and thus lacked the authority to set special elections.On Monday morning, it was Mr. Cutler’s turn to be sworn in on the House floor. In an interview afterward, he said that since he was the House Republican leader and since there were 101 Republicans ready to take office, compared with 99 Democrats, “the math makes me the majority leader.”Mr. Cutler said that he would soon submit his own dates for the special elections but that the recent moves by the Democrats had made it too complicated to figure out the dates just yet.What happens now is anyone’s guess.Adam Bonin, an elections lawyer in Philadelphia who has long worked with Democrats, said the stakes were significant. “This isn’t just about who’s in charge of this chamber for the first month,” he said. “This really is about all sorts of potential exercises of power.”Among them is a Senate bill that would put a handful of constitutional amendments proposed by Republicans on a statewide ballot — including ones that would establish a voter ID requirement, expand the legislature’s power and assert that there is no state constitutional right to abortion. If each chamber approved the bill during the upcoming legislative session, the questions would be put to a statewide vote.Some Democrats are also concerned that if Republicans control the House, even temporarily, they might change the rules to ensure that their choice for speaker keeps the job even if Democrats win control after the special elections.Mr. Cutler said such speculation was premature, insisting that the first priority of the session should be electing a new speaker.As for which party is in charge when that vote happens, it is too soon to say. More

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      Tied New Hampshire Race Spurs a Redo. Why Aren’t Voters Talking About It?

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      One race’s final tally: 970 to 970. So two candidates square off again in a city where voters are mostly keeping their politics to themselves.ROCHESTER, N.H. — Residents were intrigued, but not exactly shocked, when a state House of Representatives race in the small city of Rochester ended in a deadlock last month: 970 votes cast for the incumbent Democrat, 970 for the Republican challenger.In the purplish state of New Hampshire, where Rochester sits between the liberal southern seacoast and the more conservative Lakes Region at its center, the tie only confirmed what people already knew: Their city of 30,000, like their country, is politically split. And like many Americans, they are trying to navigate the divide with a careful approach: keeping their views to themselves and attempting to get along.Last week, state legislators voted to send the tied race in Rochester’s Ward 4, where there are about 3,000 voters, back to the city for a special election, expected to be held in February. Both candidates said they are determined to prevail, though they dread the challenge — familiar to many a hopeful presidential candidate — of inspiring voter turnout in the frigid, slushy middle of a long New Hampshire winter.“It’s going to be a tough slog,” said David Walker, the Republican, a longtime City Council member who challenged state Representative Chuck Grassie, a three-term Democrat. “I can’t see a lot of elderly people coming out in the cold, but you just have to knock on the doors and entice them.”The two men have known each other, and have worked together on city business, for years. Mr. Grassie said he mentored Mr. Walker in his early years on the council, helping the newcomer learn how to read a budget. Mr. Walker said he once helped Mr. Grassie with an unsuccessful campaign for mayor.They live a half-mile apart on the same street of modest houses, separated by a cemetery, a ball field and the polling place for their ward, a brick elementary school.State Representative Chuck Grassie, a three-term Democrat, has been a proponent for causes including shoreline protection, tax relief for older residents and the decriminalization of marijuana.Ryan David Brown for The New York TimesDavid Walker, a Republican and longtime City Council member who retired recently from a career as an engineering supervisor, wants to focus on economic issues and rein in spending.M. Scott Brauer for The New York TimesLow-key despite their unresolved rivalry, the candidates say they see no reason to become enemies now. “I went by his house the other day and said hello,” Mr. Walker said. “He said, ‘Oh, you’ve come to concede?’ And I said, ‘No.’”The mild tone of the local standoff stands in stark contrast to recent national races with split outcomes, like that of Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia, the Democrat who last week fended off a challenge from Herschel Walker, a Republican, in a bitter and chaotic runoff. In Rochester, as in many small cities and towns, politics tend to be practical, with the drama left at town hall. David Walker, 59, who retired recently from a career as an engineering supervisor, describes himself as “conservative but not hard core.” He said voters he talked to during the campaign were most concerned about inflation, the economy and heating costs this winter, and he wants to rein in what he said was reckless spending by Democrats.The Aftermath of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6A moment of reflection. More