Pa. primary election results: Hot tickets and upsets

With 99 percent of the state’s precincts reporting, here are the election results of some notable races in yesterday’s primaries, via the Associated Press.

Hot tickets

>> In the hard-fought race for a Democrat Attorney General candidate, Lackawanna County prosecutor Kathleen Kane (with 371,348 votes – 53 percent) beat out two-term former Congressman Patrick
Murphy (who received 331,503 votes – 47 percent).

Murphy – an Iraq war vet who currently
practices as a partner at Fox Rothschild in
Philadelphia – was endorsed by former Gov. Ed Rendell and the Fraternal
Order of Police and had the backing of the city’s union labor force.

But those credentials were not enough for him to beat out Kane, who went on to become the
first female Attorney General nominee in the state. If she wins in November over Republican nominee David Freed, a Cumberland County
prosecutor who ran unopposed yesterday, Kane will also be the first
Democrat to hold the seat since it became an elective position in 1980

>> In another race that was rife with mudslinging, attorney Brian Sims (3,661 – 51.6 percent) unseated longtime state Rep. Babette Josephs (3,428 – 48.4 percent) – who has held the office since 1985 – to become the Democratic candidate for the 182nd Legislative District, which covers parts of Center City and South Philly. If elected in November, Sims will be the first openly LGBT legislator in Pennsylvania.

Earlier in the day, political watchdog Committee of Seventy reported a complaint that Josephs was inside a polling place asking voters to cast a ballot for her. Her camp denied the claim and said she was merely present to vote.

Upsets

>> In the 17th Congressional District primary, Pennsylvania’s longest-serving congressman, conservative “Blue Dog” Democrat U.S. Rep. Tim Holden (24,874 – 42.9 percent), lost to personal injury lawyer Matt Cartwright (33,104 – 57.1 percent).

Holden, elected to Congress in 1992, was hurt by last year’s redrawn congressional boundaries, which added thousands of new, more liberal Democrat voters to the previously-Republican district. 75 percent of the new constituents were not represented by Holden before the redistricting.

>> In the 12th Congressional District’s Democratic primary, U.S. Rep. Mark Critz (32,009 – 51 percent) beat dean of Pennsylvania’s House delegation and early favorite U.S. Rep. Jason Altmire (30,761 – 49 percent). The 12th District was redrawn by combining two districts that had previously been represented separately by Critz and Altmire.

Results that surprised no one

>> Mitt Romney sailed to victory as the Republican presidential nominee in the state with 463,961 votes – 58 percent – while Rick Santorum came in a distant second with 146,724 votes, or 18 percent.

>> In the Democratic primaries for U.S. Senate, incumbent Bob Casey (558,882, or 81 percent) beat little-known challenger Joseph Vodvarka (132,414, or 19 percent) in a bid for a second six-year term. He will face off in November against Republican Tom Smith, who eked out 39 percent of the vote (296,421) in a five-way race even though the state Republican Party and Gov. Tom Corbett endorsed competitor Steve Welch.