Four members of the state House of Representatives will need to resign their posts after winning seats in Tuesday’s municipal and judicial elections.
Their resignations should not disrupt House Democrats’ one-seat majority in the chamber, as some other vacancies threatened in the years after the 2022 election. Two of the departing members are Democrats and two are Republicans.
But Republican Rep. Louis Schmitt, who won a seat on Blair County’s Court of Common Pleas, was hopeful that Tuesday’s election results would shift public focus back onto lawmakers’ need to finish the state budget — now more than four months late.
“People were focused on the election,” Schmitt said. “Now that the election is out of the way, people can go back to policy.”
Schmitt said he’ll remain in the House until he’s sworn into his new office on January 2.
Also leaving the House are Reps. Torren Ecker, R-Adams; Josh Siegel, D-Lehigh; and Dan Miller, D-Allegheny. Ecker and Miller won seats on their respective counties’ Common Pleas courts, while Siegel won a Lehigh County executive seat. None responded to requests for comment on Wednesday.
Their departures will leave the usually 203-member House at a 100-99 split.
Budget woes
Lawmakers aren’t saying much about where budget negotiations stand. Legislative leaders met with Gov. Josh Shapiro in a series of in-person meetings in his Capitol office last week.
“Not right now,” Shapiro told a reporter, when asked if he had any updates after meetings with House Majority Leader Matt Bradford ran past 9 p.m. last Thursday.
The pair had met with Speaker of the House Joanna McClinton, D-Philadelphia, Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman, R-Indiana, and Senate President Pro Temp. Kim Ward, R-Westmoreland, at least once each day before then.
They, too, declined to comment.
Both chambers are scheduled to return to Harrisburg for voting sessions on Nov. 17, but either could bring lawmakers back for a vote with a 24-hour notice.
Democrats widely outperformed Republicans across the state in Tuesday’s election.
Franklin & Marshall College political scientist Stephen Medvic said he doubted the results would move the needle “in significant and immediate ways, but it probably nudges us closer to a settlement, if for no other reason than that it shakes things loose.”
Chris Borick, a political scientist at Muhlenberg College, said the Democratic Party’s widespread success on Election Day might pressure GOP lawmakers to reconsider their agenda and messaging.
“(The) state budget impasse may be one of the first places where we see the effects,” Borick said.
Senate Republicans have argued the state must not tap its roughly $11 billion in reserves to offset the increase in public education and Medicaid spending that Shapiro and House Democrats have proposed.
Filling the vacancies
State law grants McClinton the power to call a special election to fill the vacancies. After the members’ resignations, McClinton will have 10 days to select an election date.
The incumbent parties are comfortably situated to hold onto the four seats. Miller won reelection in 2024 with about two-thirds of the vote, while the other three members ran uncontested.
These would be the latest special elections in the House brought on by a member’s victory in a race for a different office. The practice has inspired legislation to ban seeking one office while holding another in five states — Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii and Texas.
Despite Philadelphia having had a “resign-to-run” rule for local officials since 1951, the idea has not garnered traction among Pennsylvania lawmakers. No proposals to do so have been introduced this year.