Will Trump Effect Unseat Key House Transpo Leaders?
Rep. Bill Shuster (R-PA) Photo: Evan Lockridge
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Rep. Bill Shuster (R-PA) Photo: Evan Lockridge
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Just three weeks from now, Election Day will at last mercifully reveal whether Donald Trump’s upstart and populist or Hillary Clinton’s plodding and cautious campaign has won the White House.
But the more the polls in these final days point to Secretary Clinton prevailing, the more they indicate that the reelections of some GOP stalwarts on Capitol Hill are threatened.
Of greatest interest to the trucking industry is the impact Trump’s recent free fall in the polls may have on the reelection of key members of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.
The committee “faces a shakeup after Nov. 8, with several high-profile members– all the way up to the chairman— far from guaranteed to keep their seats,” argues an Oct. 18 post by Politico’s Morning Transportation reporters.
The daily online political tipsheet points out that Rep. Bill Shuster (R-PA), the committee’s chairman, is “embroiled in a race many didn’t expect to be so tight.” Tea Party-backed challenger Art Halvorson narrowly lost the GOP primary to Shuster and then won the Democratic nod as a write-in candidate As a result, the state’s Democratic Party has thrown its support to another write-in, Adam Sedlock, whom Halvorson bested by just 41 votes in the primary.
Even with all that, the smart money has been on Shuster keeping his seat, despite him facing ethical questions over his reported dating of an airlines lobbyist while he was legislating an overhaul of the nation’s air traffic control system.
For example, back in August, Politico reporter Heather Cagyle contended that Halvorson faced “an uphill battle” as both establishment Republicans and Democrats will be working to undermine his candidacy.”
Then Trump happened and now all bets are off in the Keystone State and other presidential battleground states as well as in specific Congressional districts.
Morning Transportation also doesn’t …Read the rest of this story
