Yesterday, The Daily Beast released a report detailing the increasing vulnerability of Freedom Caucus Chairman Scott Perry.
Perry, who was “central to the planning of Jan. 6,” has spent the last year threatening to gut critical programs like Social Security and Medicare, downplaying death threats against his colleagues, and voting to defund federal law enforcement.
And while Perry stands for the most extreme position on every issue possible, polling shows that his extremism isn’t paying off with voters in his district giving him a mere 34% approval rating.
DCCC Spokesperson Aidan Johnson:
“MAGA extremism has taken over the Republican party — and Scott Perry has led the charge towards the far-right. Perry’s unabashed extremism reveals just how deeply out-of-touch he is with his own constituents.”
Democrats are convinced they have a real shot at ousting the infamous Trump ally this cycle by banking that voters in Perry’s district will reject his role in the ‘Big Lie’ and hardline brand of politics.
“Everything from his attempts to steal the 2020 presidential election, to his extreme views on issues that are important like abortion, I think this district is primed to be extremely competitive,” Pennsylvania Democratic strategist Mike Mikus told The Daily Beast.
Perry, as the current leader of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus, was allegedly a key player in the plot to overturn the 2020 presidential election results, connecting former President Donald Trump with DOJ official Jeffrey Clark, who backed Trump’s election denialism.
As part of an FBI probe into efforts to overturn the election, in August 2022, the FBI confiscated Perry’s phone with a court-authorized search warrant—though the FBI has been unable to access the phone amid legal challenges.
But as Mikus put it to The Daily Beast, politically, “it’s never a good thing with voters when the FBI seizes your cellphone.”
Democratic challengers are counting on that sentiment to turn the tides in Perry’s Pennsylvania district, which encompasses Dauphin County—home of the state capitol Harrisburg—as well as parts of Cumberland and York counties.
While the district is an R+5 in the Partisan Voting Index—basically a measure of how many more percentage points a district is Republican or Democrat—recent polling suggests Perry is vulnerable.
An October Public Policy Polling poll found that Perry has just a 34 percent approval rating in the district and holds just a two-point lead against a “generic Democratic candidate.”
The district, which was redrawn in 2018, broke for Trump by a four-point margin in 2020, but voted for Pennsylvania’s Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro last year against far-right candidate Doug Mastriano by about 12 points.
Democrats point to another indicator that the area is turning blue. Democrats flipped the Dauphin County Board of Commissioners for the first time in 100 years this month. Some school board races, including in the conservative York County, have also trended Democrat.
J.J. Abbott, a Harrisburg-based Democratic strategist, told The Daily Beast that Perry’s involvement in Jan. 6 gives Democrats an effective segway to tell voters about Perry’s other extremist positions, like his hardline views on abortion.
“Perry is so extreme on every issue, but the January 6 stuff just sort of provides a proof point for that, that I think is particularly persuasive with a lot of voters that the Democrat will need to win,” Abbott said.
Perry’s record on abortion is particularly primed for Democratic attacks. The Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade has invigorated Democratic voters nationally, and Perry’s firm anti-abortion record will be a target. Most recently, for example, Perry championed an effort to block the military from reimbursing travel expenses for service members seeking an abortion.
Perry’s GOP detractors and his Democratic challengers agree; the Freedom Caucus chairman checks the boxes as their 2024 anti-abortion, election-denying boogeyman. They are hungry to make this race about picking off a sitting duck whose politics, they argue, don’t align with the voters in the swingy district.
