Rep. Joe Kennedy III (D-MA) thinks that Democrats will turn a long-red part of Pennsylvania blue on Tuesday.
“I look forward to calling Conor [Lamb] a colleague in about a week when he gets sworn in,” the Massachusetts Congressman told Cheddar in a recent interview.
The showdown for Pennsylvania’s District 18 U.S. House seat is between Lamb, an attorney and former United States Marine, and Republican Rick Saccone, who currently serves in the state legislature. The candidates are vying to fill the seat left vacant by Rep. Tim Murphy, who stepped down amid an extramarital affair scandal last fall.
The GOP has held the seat since 2002, and in the 2016 presidential race Donald Trump won the district by 20 points. But this special election is shaping up to be much closer. A Monmouth University [poll](https://www.monmouth.edu/polling-institute/reports/monmouthpoll_pa_031218/) released Monday showed Lamb had a lead over Saccone in three different turnout models.
Republicans, who’ve dumped about $8 million into the Saccone campaign compared to the less than $400,000 Democrats gave Lamb, are hoping to avoid an outcome like Roy Moore’s failed Senate run in Alabama last year.
And Kennedy said that if Lamb wins, it could send the opposing party a big message.
“It’s undoubtedly a warning sign for the presidency and for President Trump specifically,” he said. “I think it’s showing that there’s an awful lot of Americans out there that are recognizing the way that a Republican-led Congress is leading the country is not reflective of their values or visions or what they think is right.”
For the full interview, [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/all-eyes-on-close-pa-special-election).
Oil companies offered a combined $264 million for drilling rights in federal waters in the Gulf of Mexico on Wednesday in a sale mandated by last year’s climate bill compromise.
Adidas is withdrawing its challenge to a Black Lives Matter trademark application featuring three parallel stripes, two days after it contested the image with the U.S. Trademark Office.
The state of Arkansas sued TikTok and Facebook parent Meta on Tuesday, claiming the social media companies were misleading consumers about the safety of children on their platforms and protections of users' private data.
Russia’s top security agency arrested an American reporter for the Wall Street Journal on espionage charges, the first time a U.S. correspondent was put behind bars on spying accusations since the Cold War. The newspaper denied the allegations against Evan Gershkovich.
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Longtime Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz is facing sharp questioning before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee where he is defending the company’s actions during an ongoing unionizing campaign.
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According to a Reuters report, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon is being deposed over the bank's relationship with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
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