'It's time to send a woman to Congress': Pa. candidates on final push before primary day

An older woman was gardening outside her Delaware County home, listening to Bob Seger through her headphones, when she was startled by a group of millennials.

"Don't give anyone a heart attack!" she said with a laugh.

The liberal activists and operatives were walking the streets of Havertown on Saturday, urging voters to cast a ballot for Mary Gay Scanlon, a Democrat running for Congress in Pennsylvania's newly formed Fifth District.

Gabby Richards, 24, wore a T-shirt emblazoned with the slogan "Elect Women." She explained that Pennsylvania ranks almost dead-last in the country in female representation in elected office.

"It's time to send a woman to Congress," she said.

"Past time!" the green thumb replied.

The Philadelphia area has become one of the country's most significant battlegrounds in the fight for control of the U.S. House — and the primaries Tuesday will shape some of its key fall races.

On the last weekend before polls open, candidates and their supporters rallied voters at cookouts, block parties, pancake breakfasts, and, of course, front doors throughout the region. State Sen. Scott Wagner, the front-runner in the Republican gubernatorial primary, also held a get-out-the-vote rally in the suburbs.

On Tuesday, Pennsylvanians will choose their party's nominees for the U.S. Senate and House as well as governor and lieutenant governor. There are also several competitive state legislative races in the area.

Democrats need to gain 23 seats to take control of the House, and in Pennsylvania and New Jersey alone they see good chances to pick up at least a half dozen, and maybe more.

"This is a huge piece of the calculus for Democrats to take back the House majority," said Stephanie Schriock, president of EMILY's List, which supports Democratic women who back abortion rights. "When we look at this nationally, we're looking at this as maybe a net gain of three to five seats in Pennsylvania alone."

Numerous Democratic women are running in key races in Bucks, Chester, Delaware, Lehigh, and Montgomery Counties, many of them with little previous political experience — though, in some cases, they face strong rivals for their party's nominations.

In the Fifth District, which is based in Delaware County but includes parts of Philadelphia and Montgomery County, Scanlon has polled first in surveys by several campaigns. State Rep. Greg Vitali is trailing close behind her. Another candidate, Rich Lazer, was endorsed by Sen. Bernie Sanders and has the support of a super PAC that has spent nearly $1 million on TV ads.

For the vast majority of Pennsylvania voters, these primary races represent their first chance to weigh in on a federal election since President Trump's stunning 2016 victory.

Kate Lenahan, a suburban lawyer who canvassed for Scanlon on Saturday, said she "wasn't really involved" before Trump was elected. Now she is on the local Democratic committee.

Liberals are energized, she said, and the Democratic Party is in a good position for November.

"Whoever the sitting president is, the midterms tend to favor the other party."

Scanlon agreed: "How many forums we've seen, that to me has been an indicator of how engaged people are."

At a get-out-the-vote rally on the other side of the political spectrum, Republicans assured their party's activists that the Democrats' blue wave was receding.

"We can fight this," Val DiGiorgio, chairman of Pennsylvania's GOP, said to dozens at the Northampton Township Senior Center. "The generic ballot, which is where you vote for a Republican or a Democrat for Congress [in opinion polls], we've seen that go from double digits for Democrats to now, as CNN reported last week, it's basically tied."

DiGiorgio urged the audience to vote for Wagner, a businessman-turned-senator, in the GOP primary for governor. "He knows what we all know in our hearts — that Harrisburg is broken."

The Republican gubernatorial contest has become so contentious that DiGiorgio urged Wagner's rival Paul Mango to take down a TV ad. He said the spot, which called Wagner a "deadbeat dad" and a "slumlord," could hurt the party's chances this fall.

But no one mentioned Wagner's primary opponents Saturday. Instead, they talked up Trump's tax cuts and talked down a Democratic voting surge.

"This wave? Forget the wave, OK?" Wagner told the crowd. "I saw something happen in 2016. … I purchased 15,000 Trump signs personally. They were gone in 10 days."

Bob Haywood, a Huntingdon Valley retiree, said that he was probably voting for Wagner in Tuesday's primary — but not "because the party told me to."

He considered casting a ballot for Mango, he said, but didn't like his negative ads. Their message about Wagner wasn't entirely lost on him, however.

"He's not a perfect individual," he said, but "we're not voting for the national pastor."

As the event came to a close, Wagner's team handed out roses to the mothers in the room, and Bucks County party leader Patricia Poprik delivered a closing blow.

"We're going to get out there," she said in a scratchy roar, "and we're going to do so much, that that blue wave they're talking about? They're going to find out what great swimmers we are."