Senior state House member joins 9th District race
A high-ranking state House member is running in the GOP primary to replace soon-to-retire U.S. Rep. Bill Shuster.
House Majority Leader Dave Reed of Indiana County announced plans Tuesday to seek the party nomination for the 9th District seat.
“I’m running for Congress to help lead our communities back here at home and to fight for our way of life in Washington,” Reed said in a statement his campaign sent out. “America can be great again because of the workers and families in communities like ours who fight every single day to pass a better future on to their children and grandchildren. We deserve better than where Washington has led us.”
Reed joined the House in 2003 and has been majority leader since late in 2014.
He is the fifth candidate to announce plans to seek the party nomination. He joins Sen. John Eichlberger of Blair County, Ben Hornberger of Cumberland County, Travis Schooley of Franklin County and Art Halvorson of Bedford County.
Halvorson lost to Shuster in the 2016 primary by a little more than a percentage point.
The 9th District writhes from eastern Washington and Greene counties as far north as Indiana County. It sprawls past Altoona to Chambersburg in the central part of the state. Shuster, who’s held the seat since 2001, said Jan. 2 he plans to retire at the end of this term.
Uncertainty surrounds the primaries following the state Supreme Court’s ruling Monday that the congressional district map drawn in 2011 by the GOP-controlled state Legislature is unconstitutional.
The court’s decision requires the Republican-controlled Legislature to redraw the congressional maps by Feb. 9 and submit them to Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf for his approval by Feb. 15. If the politicians don’t finalize the map by those dates, the court said it will work “expeditiously” to draw its own based on evidence presented when the case was in Commonwealth Court.