A new plan set in motion on Monday could shake loose a constitutional amendment to enact universal photograph identification to vote.
House Republican leadership said letting the bill languish in committee ignores the popularity of the policy among voters, especially those anxious about election security.
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Some Pennsylvania state House Republicans are unhappy with the timetable their legislative rivals have set forth to replace Representative Mike Zabel (D-Drexel Hill) who is resigning in light of sexual harassment allegations.
Representative Craig Williams (R-Chadds Ford) tweeted his reaction to these events, excoriating the Democrats for asserting they have majority control of the House of Representatives, even though their number would tie that of Republicans at 101. He furthermore blasted them for failing to schedule a special election for the May 16 primary, something that could happen if Zabel made his resignation effective before March 16. A special election will instead take place this fall.
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Pennsylvania House Republicans and a union representing many social-service workers are calling on state Representative Mike Zabel (D-Drexel Hill) to resign over allegations he sexually harassed one of that union’s lobbyists.
Andi Perez, the political director of the Pennsylvania and Delaware Division of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), is accusing Zabel of inappropriately touching her and not immediately relenting after she backed away from him.
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Pennsylvania State Representative Joanna McClinton (D-Philadelphia) on Tuesday was sworn in as State House Speaker, replacing State Representative Mark Rozzi (D-Temple) in that role shortly after he stepped down from it.
Rozzi’s two months at the helm of the House of Representatives have been fraught with contention. Immediate past speaker and House Minority Leader Bryan Cutler (R-Quarryville), who corralled support within his caucus for Rozzi when his party enjoyed a momentary slim majority, recalled that the Berks County Democrat promised to drop his Democratic affiliation. Rozzi never did so and clashed with the House GOP on procedural and organizational issues.
Pennsylvania state House Republicans on Monday excoriated their Democratic counterparts for failing to reconvene and failing to start investigating sexual-harassment allegations against a Democratic House member.
Republicans have blasted Speaker Mark Rozzi (D-Temple) for dragging out the process of finalizing operating rules and bringing the House of Representatives back into session. The speaker, whose party holds a majority of seats, initially said he would only agree to allow legislation to be considered once the House voted on a measure allowing adults victims of sexual abuse to sue their alleged predators despite the statute of limitations. The House passed such legislation last week.
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Pennsylvania Democrats in the House of Representatives are seizing their new majority in the state House of Representatives — secured this week with three special-election victories — to advance abortion and lose voting security.
Pennsylvania Democratic Party Chairman Sharif Street, who represents part of Philadelphia in the state Senate, issued a statement congratulating Joe McAndrew, Abigail Salisbury and Matt Gergely, all of whom won Allegheny County-based House seats. The chair said he looks forward to the work he believes House leadership wants to do to keep abortion widely available and ensure Pennsylvanians need not submit identification to vote at the polls.
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Pennsylvania House Republican Leader Bryan Cutler (R-Quarryville) on Thursday insisted he has the right to schedule special elections for three legislative vacancies. He wants two elections to take place during next May’s primaries.
Cutler’s party has tussled with Democrats over control of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives in the wake of November’s elections. Democrats won a majority of House seats that month, but Republican members nonetheless outnumber Democrats by two insofar as three seats to which the latter party won elections are vacant.
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Pennsylvania former House Speaker Bryan Cutler (R-Quarryville) this weekend announced he filed a lawsuit in the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania over Representative Joanna McClinton’s (D-Philadelphia) assertion of House majority-leader status.
McClinton has used her title as majority leader to schedule special elections to replace one deceased member and two retired members of the state House of Representatives. State law calls on the House speaker to determine special-election dates for that chamber and vests the House majority leader with that power if the speaker cannot perform that duty.
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Pennsylvania’s House of Representatives voted on Wednesday to impeach Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner (D) by a vote of 107 to 85.
All Democrats in attendance opposed the resolution introduced by Representative Martina White (R-Philadelphia). All present Republicans supported it except for Representative Mike Puskaric (R-Jefferson Hills) who is retiring at the end of the term.
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Residents of Pennsylvania’s 32nd House District posthumously reelected deceased Democratic state Representative Anthony DeLuca (D-PA-Pittsburgh) on Tuesday, necessitating a special election in the months ahead.
The lawmaker faced no Republican challenger this year and bested leftist Green Party candidate Zarah Livingston, garnering 21,244 votes (85.9 percent) to her 3,490 (14.1 percent).
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Republicans in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives were dealt an expected blow this week as the state Supreme Court unanimously declined to overturn a new state-House-district map.
Every ten years, Pennsylvania’s Legislative Reapportionment Commission (LRC) must redraw the state’s 203 state legislative districts and 50 state senatorial districts to cohere with new population data reported by the U.S. Census. The five-member LRC is composed of the respective Republican and Democratic leaders in the House and Senate as well as a chair appointment by the state Supreme Court. In the latest round of redistricting, Democrats effectively controlled the LRC, as the majority of justices on the court selected fellow Democrat Mark A. Nordenberg.
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Yesterday, Democrats in Pennsylvania and beyond recalled the Jan. 6, 2021 D.C-Capitol riot as an occasion to denounce voter-ID proposals and urge progressive reforms.
“Here’s the truth,” Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro told an online audience at a panel hosted by leftist organizations including Better PA and the New Pennsylvania Project. “You can draw a straight line between the lies [and former President Donald Trump’s post-2020-election] litigation to the events of January the sixth. And now, you can continue that straight line to voter-suppression laws that are being passed by Republicans in state houses across the country.”
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Pennsylvania House GOP leaders announced this week that their caucus will hold field hearings on the proposed new legislative-district plan which stands to make House districts more winnable for Democrats.
The first House GOP Policy Committee hearing on the commission’s plan will take place on Tues., Jan. 4 at 4 p.m. at McCandless Town Hall at 9955 Grubbs Road in Wexford. The second will occur on Tues., Jan. 11 at 4 p.m. at the Upper Allen Township Building at 100 Gettysburg Pike in Mechanicsburg.
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After years of Pennsylvania Democrats excoriating Republicans for gerrymandering, the 2021 Legislative Reapportionment Commission’s state-level redistricting proposals are drawing ire from members of both parties.
Republicans have broadly opposed the preliminary redistricting plan for the Pennsylvania House of Representatives and at least one Senate Democrat, Lisa Boscola (Bethlehem), is incensed about changes to her chamber’s map.
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