09/09/2024 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 09/09/2024 13:40
Scott Perry is finding himself in a weaker political position than ever before as November rapidly approaches.
Despite national Democrats spending less than $50,000 in the district last cycle, Scott Perry's rampant election denialism and effort to ban abortion nationwide has left him with an abysmal job approval rating.
Now, Scott Perry has found himself up against Janelle Stelson - a local broadcast journalist and extremely well known candidate that Cook Political Report called Perry's "strongest opponent yet."
DCCC Spokesperson Aidan Johnson:
"The tide is turning against Scott Perry and his extreme agenda, whether he seems to realize it or not. Central Pennsylvanians are sick and tired of their representative trying to strip them of their fundamental freedoms, and it will cost Perry his job in November."
Perry wins big in Dillsburg, practically 90% in one election. That margin has dropped since 2014, though, and the larger 10th district has stayed competitive since its redrawing.
[Perry's] margins there may be a canary in the coal mine for a district that has grown more competitive over time.
Perry earned his third ticket to Washington with 66% of the entire district in 2016, when Adams County backed him 72%. The district lost that deep red county in 2018 and shifted farther north into Cumberland and Dauphin counties. That put Perry's seat in play, and the political class outside of Pennsylvania paid attention.
National polling suggested the race could be close and it was named to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee's "Red to Blue list." Money flowed in and Perry, a near-generationally popular incumbent, went from winning his seat by 107,000 votes to winning by 7,600.
The nail-biting 51%, close by any standards, was unheard of for Perry.
How much longer can the proud Army veteran residing in Carroll Township keep winning if his margins in Dillsburg keep shrinking?
His seventh opponent is former WGAL news anchor Janelle Stelson, a Democrat who lives outside the district in Lancaster County and until last year was a registered Republican. Polling indicates it is a very close race.
Perry has voted in favor of government shut-downs, against honoring police officers who defended the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, opposed abortion and supported former President Donald Trump's lie that the 2020 Presidential Election was stolen.
After the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Perry continued promoting Trump's transparent lies about election fraud. Many legislators who expressed interest in discarding votes to keep Trump in office had a change of heart after the political violence erased America's ability to tout a continuous peaceful transfer of power.
Not Perry, who stood on the House floor that night and read emphatically a scripted plea to disqualify the will of 3,458,229 Pennsylvanians, some of them his constituents and neighbors. Some of them, perhaps, also voted for him.
The blatantly anti-democratic attempt to invalidate Pennsylvania's 20 Electoral College votes failed, but Perry defends it to this day.
And even though Perry's motion was rejected by 355 of his peers in the House and 99 out of 100 U.S. senators, he maintains that no one can refute his reason for objecting to the certification of the election.