Janelle Stelson visits polling places on Election Day
Democrat Janelle Stelson takes a selfie with a fan and talks to poll workers who didn’t vote for her. Stelson is running against Republican Rep. Scott Perry.
Republican U.S. Rep. Scott Perry has a narrow lead over Democrat Janelle Stelson in unofficial results: just 1.2 percent, with 98 percent of votes counted, according to unofficial results.
The race has not yet been called by the Associated Press.
Perry, a leader of the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus, was ahead of the former WGAL anchor by 9,412 votes out of 400,508 votes cast in the 10th Congressional District, which includes Dauphin, Cumberland and part of York counties, according to results showing were reported Wednesday morning. by the Pennsylvania Department of State.
Perry received 203,460 votes, compared to Stelson’s 197,048.
It was Perry’s closest reelection run since 2018, when he defeated Democrat George Scott by 2.6 percent.
Stelson led Perry by an 8.6 percent margin in Dauphin County, 78,881 votes to Perry’s 66,280. Perry had a lead of 2,418 votes, a 4 percent margin in Cumberland County. Both provinces reported on Wednesday morning that 98 percent of votes had been counted.
In York County, he has his largest margin, 11.2 percent, and leads Stelson by 3,595 votes. Perry received 67,554 votes in York County to Stelson’s 53,959, with 96 percent of the votes counted, according to unofficial results.
Stelson had an early lead in the race, dominating in the mail-in voting and building a margin of 29,964 votes out of 113,200 cast, but Election Day voting made up the difference for Perry.
Democrats had seen Stelson as their best chance to defeat Perry, noting that her celebrity in Central Pennsylvania had long been an anchor for the top-rated WGAL News, a fact Stelson praised and often said meant she spent nearly four decades in the living rooms of voters. . Moreover, Stelson had been a Republican before switching parties to run against Perry.
The race attracted national attention – and the large sums of money that came with it. The amount of money spent on the race could be a record for the district.
According to Federal Election Commission reports, Stelson far outpaced Perry in fundraising and spending, spending nearly $2.6 million over time. During that same period, Perry spent $925,287. Before the election, Stelson raised $4.4 million to Perry’s $3.2 million. According to the FEC’s latest reports, a total of $6.5 million had been spent on the race, $3.4 million by Stelson and $3.1 million by Perry.
Stelson’s contributions included $1 million from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which targeted the seat believing Stelson had a good chance of unseating Perry in what is considered a Republican district.
Democrats were also buoyed by the district’s changing demographics, expanding suburbs in northern York County and the West Shore in eastern Cumberland County, saying traditionally Republican voters in the ‘burbs tend to be more moderate.
Recent election results show that the district is no longer as red as it used to be. In 2020, Trump defeated President Joe Biden by just 4 percentage points in the district. In 2022, Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro won the district by 12 percentage points over extremist MAGA Republican State Senator Doug Mastriano.
However, Republicans point out that Perry prevailed in both elections and outperformed his party’s top candidates, an indication of his connection to the district’s voters. In 2020, he defeated Democrat Eugene DePasquale, the former state auditor general, by 6.6 percentage points. In 2022, he defeated Democrat Shamaine Daniels by 7.6 points.
The polls were close, and party-sponsored surveys brought the race within a percentage point or two. An independent poll from Susquehanna Polling of Harrisburg had Stelson with a healthy lead over Perry, 48 percent to 39 percent, with a margin of error of five percentage points. The same poll found that 38 percent have an unfavorable opinion of Perry, while 40 percent have a favorable opinion of Stelson. That poll was considered an outlier by both parties.
During the race, Stelson campaigned for the preservation of reproductive rights and for Perry’s role in former President Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election, a role that led to the FBI seizing his cell phone during her research into that effort.
Perry has said he has also heard from voters — “thousands of people” — who believe the 2020 election was rife with fraud, and said he was merely calling for an investigation. He has repeated a widely debunked conspiracy theory that the US Postal Service “torn up” ballots.
Perry tried to define Stelson as a one-issue candidate — abortion rights — and criticized her for not living in the district. Stelson has said that if she were to win the seat, she would move from Manheim in Lancaster County’s 11th Congressional District to the 10th.
Stelson also described the race as a referendum on Perry’s 12 years as president, saying he has little to show for it. Perry’s tenure and his membership and leadership of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus have created “chaos and dysfunction,” she said, and the voters she has spoken to are exhausted by it. She said Perry is “out of touch” with the district and calls him “a politician for life.”