GOP to fight Pennsylvania's newly redrawn district map

HARRISBURG, Pa. -- Encouraged by President Donald Trump, Republicans vowed Tuesday to fight Pennsylvania's new court-imposed map of congressional districts as dozens of candidates assessed their chances under newly formed districts and the odds a federal court could block them.

Republican members of Congress and Pennsylvania Republican lawmakers planned to sue in federal court as early as today in a bid to block a map expected to improve Democrats' chances at erasing the GOP's U.S. House majority.

The new map substantially overhauls a GOP-drawn congressional map, which helped produce a predominantly Republican delegation and was widely viewed as among the nation's most gerrymandered.

With control of the U.S. House on the line in November, Trump urged Republicans to challenge the new map of Pennsylvania's 18 congressional districts all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, if necessary.

"Your Original was correct! Don't let the Dems take elections away from you so that they can raise taxes & waste money!" Trump tweeted.

Lawyers for the Democratic voters who successfully challenged Pennsylvania's congressional districts as unconstitutionally gerrymandered said Republicans have no legal or factual basis to sue.

In a statement, the Philadelphia-based Public Interest Law Center said the new court-ordered districts are non-partisan, more compact and competitive and Republicans should stop holding onto the gerrymandered districts they drew in 2011.

The Democratic-majority state Supreme Court met its deadline Monday to issue the new boundaries after it threw out the 6-year-old map last month. The Republican-controlled Legislature and Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf did not produce a consensus replacement map in the three weeks allotted by the court.

Independent analysts said the court-ordered map should improve Democratic prospects while still favoring Republicans as a whole. An analysis conducted through PlanScore.org concluded the court's redrawn map eliminates "much of the partisan skew" favoring Republicans on the old Republican-drawn map, although not all of it.

Democrats cheered the new map, while Republicans blasted it and it left dozens of candidates reconsidering their future.

Chief among them is Republican Rep. Ryan Costello, whose suburban Philadelphia district was narrowly won by Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016. Costello is in more dire straits since the court added the heavily Democratic city of Reading to his district and ironed out geographic contortions designed to capture more Republican voters.

On Tuesday, Costello could not say whether he will run in his district if the court-ordered congressional map survives a federal court challenge.

But Costello lashed out at the state Supreme Court, saying the justices' map was politically motivated, their map-making process was politically corrupt and state lawmakers should consider impeaching them.

"I'm all riled up," Costello said.

Pennsylvania's state House Republican majority leader, Dave Reed, now lives in the same district as Rep. Glenn Thompson, a fellow Republican, rather than the district of the congressman he had hoped to succeed, retiring Republican Rep. Bill Shuster. Reed said he did not know what he would do.

Joe Peters, a former top state drug prosecutor and Scranton police officer, had been running to succeed a fellow Republican, Rep. Lou Barletta, who is campaigning for U.S. Senate.

Peters now finds his rural northeastern Pennsylvania home in the same district as Republican Rep. Tom Marino. That prompted Peters to start thinking about moving into one of two nearby districts that don't have a Republican incumbent, while trying to gauge whether a federal lawsuit will undo the new districts.

"It's a combination of a game of chicken and a game of chess," Peters said.

The new map is to be in effect for the May 15 primary. The first day for candidates to start circulating petitions is Tuesday.

Petitions weren't available yet and neither was complete information about which municipalities and precincts are in each new district.

The map removes the heart of one district from Philadelphia, where a crowd of Democratic candidates had assembled to replace the retiring Democratic Rep. Bob Brady, and moves it to suburban Montgomery County, leaving many of those candidates in the same districts as Democratic Reps. Dwight Evans and Brendan Boyle.

The new map also threw a curveball into the March 13 special election in southwestern Pennsylvania. The court's map puts each candidate's home in a district with a Pittsburgh-area incumbent, making it possible Democrat Conor Lamb and Republican Rick Saccone would circulate petitions for the primary in one district while they run in another district for the special election.