Lancaster County State Rep. Bryan Cutler won the leadership role of the House Republican caucus last week during a six-hour long closed-door meeting in Harrisburg as the House Speaker position remains in limbo.
Cutler, who took over as majority leader in 2019 from Rep. Dave Reed and became Speaker in June 2020 after the resignation of Rep. Mike Turazi, will most likely lose the Speaker role after Democrats won control of the House for the first time in more than a decade with a slim 102-101 majority. Cutler was the first Lancaster County House speaker since Aaron B. Hess in 1929.
However, the pre-election death of Rep. Tony DeLuca (D) of Allegheny County, who won re-election in the Nov. 8 General Election, will see the House tied 101-101 on swearing in day on Jan. 3, creating unsurety as to who will be elected Speaker. The Democrats re-elected Rep. Joanna McClinton of Philadelphia to serve as their leader and would become the first female Speaker in Pennsylvania if she can secure enough votes.
In the Nov. 22 closed-door meeting, Majority Leader Kerry Benninghoff (R-Centre) bowed out of running for the leadership position, leaving Cutler to serve temporarily as the minority leader. The Republicans also elected Rep. Tim O’Neil (R-Washington) as whip; Rep. Seth Grove (R-York) as the ranking Republican on the House Appropriations Committee; Rep. Josh Kail (R-Beaver) as policy chair, and Rep. Sheryl Delozier (R-Cumberland) as caucus administrator.
Rep. Martina White (R-Philadelphia) will remain caucus secretary, and Rep. George Dunbar (R-Westmorland) will remain as caucus chairperson.
Cutler said each elected leader has varied career backgrounds and life experiences prior to arriving in Harrisburg that allows them to “find solutions” to problems in the state.
Despite possibly being relegated to the minority party after holding a 111-92 majority in the House in the last session, Cutler said the Republican caucus sees the fundamentals for the party’s success are to drive growth and prosperity in Pennsylvania.
Cutler said the Republican caucus had a “robust discussion about who we are, what we stand for and what the future holds for us here in Pennsylvania” and that its members emerged from the closed-door meeting “optimistic, united and ready to take on the big issues that are currently confronting the Commonwealth.”
“Our caucus is more united than ever,” Cutler said in a press conference after the meeting. “We stand here today looking towards the future for all Pennsylvanians, and we want to lead on behalf of all Pennsylvanians.”
Cutler said the outcome of the 2022 General Election for the House was not the result of policy decisions or “political calculus” by Republicans but was instead the “end result of an outcome-oriented map that was meant to favor Democrats” through redistricting. Cutler said one of the creators of the new redistricting map, former chancellor of the University of Pittsburgh Mark Nordenberg, made comments before the election that he wanted to see an evenly divided chamber.
Cutler also said before the maps were completed, Leader McClinton commented that the path to the majority for Democrats was through redistricting.
“This is the outcome that they sought and they achieved without any actual accomplishments to lean on,” Cutler said. “Politics is a contest of ideas, and I would invite you to look at the many policy items we passed previously.”
Cutler said his time as Speaker was highlighted by the Republican legislature’s passage of tax cuts and growing the state’s Rainy Day Fund to its largest amount ever recorded, just shy of $5 billion. He said the economic accomplishments was all achieved through a divided government with Gov. Tom Wolf at the helm of the executive branch.
The new session will allow the people of Pennsylvania to see the legislative priorities Democrats want to put forth, Cutler said, and to determine if they are the correct path for the state. He said Democrat policies coming from the federal government have driven up the price of gas, food and consumer goods through inflation and that criminal justice policies have “allowed crime rates to soar.”
Cutler said “multiple efforts” over the last few weeks by House Democrats have not demonstrated a plan to roll out their agenda or to work cooperatively but instead have included “arguing over workspace and splitting up taxpayer funded office buildings.”
“The responsibility is to defeat policies that are anti-growth and defeat policies that are anti-opportunity,” Cutler said. “It will be up to us to defend that and make sure that we can be successful as a Commonwealth.”
Unsure Speaker Outcome
McClinton’s ascension to the Speaker role is far from assured with the tied 101-101 House makeup after DeLuca’s death on Oct. 9. Besides DeLuca’s vacant seat, two additional Democratic-held seats will become vacant in January, leading to a 101-99 advantage for Republicans.
Rep. Austin Davis (D-Allegheny) was elected lieutenant governor with Governor-elect Josh Shapiro. Davis will have to resign from the House before he takes the oath of office on Jan. 17.
Rep. Summer Lee (D-Allegheny) won a U.S. congressional seat in the Nov. 8 election and will be sworn in on Jan. 3 in Washington, D.C.
The Pennsylvania Constitution forbids General Assembly lawmakers from holding any other salaried local, state or federal office, but the ban does not forbid lawmakers from running for multiple positions in the same election.
The three seats will remain vacant until the new state House speaker schedules special elections to replace them. Pennsylvania state law says the three special elections must be held, at the latest, by the May 2023 primary.
The Pennsylvania House’s chief clerk, Brooke Wheeler, will preside as speaker on Jan. 3 until a new speaker is elected. How the speaker vote will play out without a clear majority remains unclear.
“It’s our goal to have a good outcome on swearing in day,” Cutler said.
The Pennsylvania House has seen contentious speaker votes in past years. In Cutler’s first term in the House in 2007, former House Speaker John Perzel (R-Philadelphia) was defeated by Rep. Denny O’Brien (R-Philadelphia) after then-Rep. Shapiro and Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell engineered a vote for O’Brien.
Cutler said he won’t concede that the three special elections will go for the Democrats and that “every vote should be counted” before a race is called. He said he was disappointed when Democrats held a press conference in Philadelphia on Nov. 9, the day after the election, about winning the majority despite military ballots still being counted and at least three House races uncalled.
“Right now we’re focused on being the Republican caucus,” Cutler said. “I think the terms majority and minority, quite frankly, are misplaced because right now we’re numerically tied.”
Staff writer Michael Yoder is an award-winning journalist who has been honored with several Keystone Press Awards for his investigative pieces.
