Conor Lamb is Confident That Absentee Ballots Will Make Him the Winner

Early Wednesday morning, with some absentee ballots yet to be counted, congressional candidate Conor Lamb told reporters that his campaign had “made a big push” to help voters get absentee ballots, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.   As a result, he said, he is confident that at least half of the uncounted absentee ballots will be for him instead of his Republican opponent.  If that is true, then Lamb will be declared the official winner of the race where he currently holds a thin lead of just 641 votes.

Read: Kristi Noem Is Banned From 20% of South Dakota.

Lamb also said that he has not yet heard yet from Saccone, but added, “I congratulate him on fighting hard the whole way.” Instead of conceding to Lamb earlier in the night Saccone told his followers that he would continue the fight and he thought ultimately he would win.

The 33-year-old Lamb, a marine veteran, was asked about his very strong showing in a congressional district that Donald Trump had carried by 20 percentage points in  the 2016 election. In his response Lamb proved he is wise beyond his years: “This is my home,” he said. “You call it a red district, I call it western Pennsylvania.”

Republicans may have been hurt by the millstone called Donald Trump who had campaigned for Republican Rick Saccone just last weekend.  In his rambling, unhinged speech the president had told his partisan audience not to “be conned by this guy Lamb.”

When asked about these reported remarks by Trump, Lamb simply replied, “There was a lot of foolishness in this election and a lot of really cartoonish campaigning, and I think by the time of the president’s visit…there was just a little bit of burnout on that type of campaigning.”

But future Congressman Lamb also said that in the Pennsylvania 18th congressional district “there are still plenty of people here who are still pretty supportive” of President Trump.

That may be true, but the results of this special election also show that there are plenty of people who voted for Trump in 2016 who are switching now to vote for a Democrat. If this carries forward to November and the nationwide midterm congressional elections, then Democrats are likely to sweep into power in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Ultimately the results of Tuesday’s election in Pennsylvania do not affect who holds power right now in Washington, but they do show that there may be millions of people in America who are sick of the chaotic, out of control reality TV show playing out every day in our White House, and who want some real change in this country.  

Voting for Conor Lamb may be just the first step in Democrats being restored to power in Washington.

Leo Vidal

I am a lifelong Democrat with a passion for social justice and progressive issues. I have degrees in writing, economics and law from the University of Iowa.