Murtha reviews election victory
U.S. Rep. John Murtha (D-Johnstown) said “overwhelming” margins of victory in counties he previously represented and a narrow win in Fayette County were keys to his defeat of U.S. Rep. Frank Mascara (D-Charleroi) in Tuesday’s Democrat primary. Murtha garnered approximately 90 percent of the vote in his native Cambria County and in Armstrong, Indiana and Somerset counties. He bested Mascara by 8,027 to 7,732 in Fayette County, where the newly configured 12th District mostly includes territory Mascara has represented for the past several years.
Overall in the nine-county district, Murtha received 63.2 percent of the vote, or 57,053 votes, compared to Mascara’s 36.7 percent of the vote, or 33,157 votes. Republican candidate Bill Choby, running unopposed, gathered 15,709 votes and will face Murtha in November.
Murtha in a press release characterized Fayette as a “battleground” and credited Democrat Party Chairman Fred L. Lebder, county Commissioner Sean M. Cavanagh, and a cadre of township supervisors led by Bob Schiffbauer and George Bozak for his strong showing there.
“(They) really helped get out the word that I’d delivered three times as much highway money as Mascara and that I’d delivered over a thousand jobs to Fayette, where Mascara never attracted any,” said Murtha. “So most of the people knew our records by the end. The mine workers were also a big factor in Fayette and cut Mascara’s margins in Greene and Washington (counties).”
Mascara carried his native Washington County section of the 12th and all of Greene County, getting about 70 percent of the votes cast in each. But his margins of victory there weren’t nearly as high as Murtha’s showing in areas generally conceded as his strongholds.
“It was gratifying to win by such a big margin, which shows that we’ve been going in the right direction and that negative campaigning doesn’t work if people don’t believe what someone’s saying,” said Murtha. He added that going into Tuesday his camp knew that if it got even 40 percent of the Fayette vote he’d win the district by a “good margin.”
Mascara could not be reached for comment. He ran a campaign centered on the theme, “Do you know the real Jack?” and basically tried to portray Murtha as a Washington insider who’d lost touch with Southwestern Pennsylvania values after 28 years in Congress.
Murtha said the underlying key to his success has been working with county and local officials who inform him of their priorities, after which he works to solve the problems or get the project done.
“When I work with the (House) Appropriations Committee or talk to the funding agencies, I can show them how the priorities are driven from the bottom up and serve our economic and community (development) efforts,” said Murtha.
“So I’ll continue to work closely with the local leaders to stay abreast of the priorities in Fayette. I’ve started to develop some of those relationships in Greene, and I’ll be reaching out to further develop those relationships. Today (Wednesday), I’m back to work in Washington, D.C., where the $30 billion supplemental appropriation is coming up again.”
A breakdown of the unofficial county-by-county vote, according toe the Pennsylvania Department of State Web site, was:
Allegheny – Murtha 442, Mascara 135.
Armstrong – Murtha 3,730, Mascara 461.
Cambria – Murtha 18,787, Mascara 478.
Fayette – Murtha 8,027, Mascara 7,732.
Greene – Mascara 3,955, Murtha 1,763.
Indiana – Murtha 1,321, Mascara 99.
Somerset – Murtha 4,216, Mascara 276.
Washington – Mascara 12,012, Murtha 4,795.
Westmoreland – Murtha 13,972, Mascara 7,001.