DeFoor is intriguing though, but I'd also have to personally learn more about him to say he's "stronger" than the rest of the bench. I think most of the reason people assume that is because they don't much about him and assume he's not a dingbat like Garrity, etc.
Honestly a lot of his win IMO in 2020 was also due to Ahmad being extremely liberal/progressive and also a bit of racism towards her as well (yes I know DeFoor is Black, but Ahmad was a more specific racism)
YES. You’re one of the few people who I’ve noticed pick up on this, but Nina’s underperformance relative to the other Democratic statewide candidates in more rural parts of PA suggests to me at least a bit of racism at play with casually voting ConservaDems and Indys. Also, Timothy DeFoor is not a very recognizably traditionally Black name, and I spoke with many rural Republicans who didn’t even know he was Black until he won the seat and they saw him on TV during election results. So Defoor didn’t seem to suffer much of the racist undervote from the rurals that has affected other Black Republicans in PA *cough* Lynn Swann *cough*. Conversely, my friends in Philly and Harrisburg, media markets with a significant percentage of Black voters, reported intense advertising portraying DeFoor as a community-minded, good government moderate without mentioning his party affiliation. I wouldn’t be surprised if he peeled off a good couple percentage points of the urban Black vote now that straight-ticket voting is no more (though I’d have to go over the precinct data to confirm that), but I don’t know that we can extrapolate his performance in the least well-known of the state row office elections, to a much more polarized gubernatorial or senatorial run. We’ll have to see!
