PA state redistricting is done by a legislative committee, 2 R, 2 D and 1 neutral outside appointee. This last cycle former Pitt Chancellor Mark Nordenberg was the non-partisan member. I suspected he'd side with the Dem map, which would actually be drawn in accordance with out state constitution making compact and contiguous districts. That's what happened. The surprise was state senate R leader Kim Ward also voting for map because it didn''t really change the state senate districts which favors Rs. The state house Rs were really mad about losing their heavily gerry-mandered majority, but the map approval vote was 4-1 fot the Dems map.
The new map shifted a lot of state house districts from R western PA to D SE/eastern PA because western PA is losing population whereas eastern PA is growing. There were only a couple competitive seats this year, so it's unlikely Dems would have more than a couple seat majority while this map is in effect.
As for the state row offices, Dems had 2 lackluster candidates. There were 6 or 8 Dems running in the primary that would've been stronger candidates, but DePasquale won because of his western PA roots/votes. He was the state aud genl, but ran in for congress in 2022 in PA10 and lost. Erin McClelland, another western PA Dem, who ran for treasurer has run several times for office outside her community and lost every time. Kenyatta was a good candidate for aud genl, but as a gay, AfAm man from Philadelphia, started with those strikes against him.
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