There may be nothing more nerve-wracking for a member of Congress than redistricting, when the once-a-decade redrawing of district boundaries injects a dose of uncertainty into their political careers.
In Pennsylvania, redrawing the districts to correspond with population shifts identified by the 2020 census will have a particularly unpredictable effect on congressional districts, since the state is expected to lose a district.
That means there will be 17 districts for 18 incumbent U.S. House members from Pennsylvania when next year’s elections roll around, raising the question of whose district will disappear and whose political career could be upended.
“I think the first question that everybody asks is, ‘Is anybody retiring?’” said Ryan Costello, a former three-term congressman from Chester County.
By the end of April, the U.S. Census Bureau is releasing the first numbers from the 2020 census, including the state population count that determines how many congressional seats and Electoral College votes each state gets.
If that confirms projections that Pennsylvania will lose a seat, it will be the 10th consecutive decade that the Keystone State has lost clout in Congress and presidential contests as its population growth continues to lag behind the nation’s.
A new map of districts must win approval from the Republican-controlled Legislature and Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, and the districts they draw could have a dramatic effect on the political careers of the state’s 18 U.S. House members.
If each of the 18 wants to run for another term in Congress, two of them will have to run against each other.
What they have to look forward to is a bare-knuckled political exercise in a state Capitol where partisan disagreements over how the pandemic and last year’s election were handled have sown a particularly poisonous atmosphere.