CONOR LAMB

Pennsylvania's high-stakes race for an open U.S. Senate seat is seeing candidates bringing big bank accounts and big-time connections from blue states.

Democrats see one of their best chances to pick up a Senate seat during next year’s midterms in Pennsylvania.

Rep. Conor Lamb (D-Pa.) announced Friday that he'll join the Democratic primary race for the U.S. Senate seat in Pennsylvania currently held by Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), who plans to retire. Why it matters: The centrist Lamb, 37, joins a crowded field in a state that's critical for Democrats' chances of retaining control of the Senate. Get market news worthy of your time with Axios Markets. Subscribe for free.Lamb first rose to prominence when he narrowly won a 2018 House special election in a Pi

Sean Parnell announced his candidacy Tuesday for the Republican nomination for Pennsylvania’s open U.S. Senate seat.

Lamb’s dilemma is a window into the Democratic Party's debate over how to win elections in Pennsylvania and across battlegrounds. “It’s kind of amazing that we even have to ask what the Democratic Party has to do to appeal to working-class people,” Lamb said. Pennsylvania's Democratic Party, in fact, has only twice nominated a woman for one of those offices and never a non-white candidate. Another candidate could be Sharif Street, the vice chair of the state Democratic Party and a Black state senator from Philadelphia. Fetterman has since joined the Democratic Party mainstream in defending the gas industry — popular with blue-collar unions — as a transition to a clean energy future.

That's enough, if set aside, to swing the election to Trump. “We will be INTERVENING in the Texas (plus many other states) case,” Trump said hours before the high court filing. Shortly before tweeting about joining Paxton's case, Trump distanced himself from the Pennsylvania challenge, saying it wasn't his. “The case everyone has been waiting for is the State's case with Texas and numerous others joining," he said. Biden beat Trump by more than 80,000 votes in Pennsylvania, a state Trump had won in 2016.

She later campaigned in Goldsboro and Fayetteville, North Carolina, two cities with a large share of Black voters. Biden is focusing on turning out Black voters in the final stretch in part to avoid a narrow outcome that could prompt Trump to seek an advantage in the courts. “Most Black voters in Philly have been skeptical of mail-in voting,” said Joe Hill, a veteran Democratic operative-turned-lobbyist from the city. There’s little chance that Trump will win all that many more Black voters this year, though his campaign believes it has made inroads with young Black men. One minute-long spot detailing Biden’s proposals to help Black people begins with Biden explicitly stating, “Black lives matter.

At a recent Trump's rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, the president showed the crowd a video of various Biden comments on fracking in a bid to portray Biden as opposed to the process. And that was days before Trump and Biden tussled over energy during the debate. After Biden noted he wanted to “transition away from the oil industry,” Trump pounced. “Basically what he is saying is, he is going to destroy the oil industry,” Trump said. Still, most blue-collar unions that work in the gas fields in Pennsylvania have endorsed Biden.

WASHINGTON Two months from Election Day, President Donald Trump and his allies are feeling new optimism about Pennsylvania, a battleground state that flipped in his favor in 2016. "Between the record enthusiasm for this President, our unprecedented ground game, and trends in Republican voter registrations, the Commonwealth, once again, is ready to deliver for President Trump this November, Nick Trainer, the Trump campaigns director of battleground strategies, said in a statement. On Tuesday, Vice President Mike Pence held a Workers for Trump rally at a construction company less than 15 miles from Bidens hometown, Scranton. Still, Bidens path in Pennsylvania is seen as more complicated than winning back Wisconsin and Michigan, the two other blue wall states Trump won by less than 1 percentage point four years ago. Latrobe, the site of Trumps Thursday rally, is about an hour outside Pittsburgh in Westmoreland County, which Trump won by large margins four years ago.

Biden celebrated his new status as the Democratic nominee alongside his wife and grandchildren in a Delaware school library. For his part, Trump spent Tuesday courting battleground voters in an effort to distract from Bidens convention. And Bidens supporters consistently report that theyre motivated more by opposition to Trump than excitement about Biden. The Democrats party elders played a prominent role throughout the night. Kerry, 76, was the Democratic presidential nominee back in 2004 when the youngest voters this fall were still in diapers.