The 6 Pa. counties will offer a test for Casey, Barletta in Senate race

Incumbent Sen. Bob Casey, a Democrat, at left, will face Republican Rep. Lou Barletta in the fall. (Photo: Submitted)

(Undated) — In Pennsylvania, six pivot counties offer a test for the U.S. Senate candidates. 

They went for a Democrat in 2012 and a Republican in  2016.

There’s Erie in the northwest; Luzerne in the northeast; Fayette and Beaver in the southwest; Northampton, outside Allentown; and Berks, more than 60 miles outside of Philadelphia. 

Democrat Bob Casey Jr. won those six counties in 2012 when he was re-elected to the Senate.

But Republican Donald Trump won those counties in the 2016 presidential race, along with Republican Pat Toomey, an incumbent U.S. senator and former head of the conservative Club for Growth. Toomey won despite keeping his distance from Trump during the 2016 campaign — he didn’t acknowledge he was voting for Trump until about an hour before the polls closed.

Val DiGiorgio, chairman of the Republican Party of Pennsylvania, sees the Toomey and Trump victories as part of a Republican shift in those counties.  

“Working class voters are increasingly becoming dissatisfied with the Democrat party stance on open borders, sanctuary cities, socialism — and the Democratic Party just seems culturally opposed to the working, middle class,” DiGiorgio said. 

Meanwhile, Nancy Patton Mills, who was elected chairwoman of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party in June, said Democrats have made efforts to improve their outreach effort in the state’s smaller counties and to give people in those counties a voice in crafting the message for the party. 

She pointed to the special election victory of Conor Lamb in a southwestern Pennsylvania district that Trump won, as a blueprint for other races. 

Casey vs. Barletta

The Senate race pits two candidates from northeastern Pennsylvania against each other.

There’s Republican Lou Barletta, a congressman and the former mayor of Hazleton whose anti-illegal immigration message got him national attention years before Trump launched his presidential campaign by talking about criminals, drug dealers and rapists from Mexico. 

And there’s Casey, the son of a former Pennsylvania Governor, a two-term Democratic senator, and a candidate who some political observers say went from bland candidate to a