Democrat’s defection underscores Pennsylvania’s political realignment – By Marc Levy (Associated Press) / Nov 24 2019
HARRISBURG, Pa. — As Pennsylvania state senators filed through the tight, wood-paneled corridor that leads out of the Senate chamber this week, John Yudichak turned into an equally tight staircase that no Democrat ever takes: down to the Senate Republican majority caucus room.
Yudichak will take those stairs a lot now that he has left the Democratic Party after two decades in the Legislature to become a registered independent who is joining the Senate’s Republican majority caucus.
And while Yudichak described his defection as an effort to empower the political middle, it reverberated swiftly in the Capitol and through the state’s politics as something else.
To many, it dealt a blow to Democratic hopes of capturing the chamber’s majority in next year’s election for the first time in nearly three decades.
“What I can say is, this absolutely takes away any chance for Senate Democrats to gain control of the Senate chamber,” said the Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati, R-Jefferson.
Sen. John Yudichak of Luzerne County speaks with members of the media at the Pennsylvania Capitol in Harrisburg, Pa., Tuesday, Nov. 19, 2019. The Democrat in Pennsylvania’s state Senate from an area that shifted decisively to support Donald Trump
Continue to article: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/nov/24/john-yudichak-pennsylvania-democrat-defection-unde/
