Special election in old 7th District
Residents of both Delaware and Chester counties who live in the old
7th Congressional District — mostly in southern and western municipalities in Chester County — are being asked to vote in a special election in that district, as well as the newly constituted 5th and 6th Congressional Districts on Tuesday.
The winner of the special election from the 7th district will serve a term of less than two months — November and December — before the new Congress is sworn in in January. The two candidates in the special election, Democrat Mary Gay Scanlon and Republican Pearl Kim, are also running against one another in the new 5th Congressional District, which encompasses Delaware County.
Not everyone who lives in Delaware County will be eligible to vote in the special election. That is because under the old Congressional districts, not all parts of the county were included in the
7th District seat held by Republican Rep. Pat Meehan. The 1st District covered the city of Chester and towns along the Delaware River. Meehan resigned his seat months ago amid reports that he used taxpayer dollars to settle a harassment suit filed by a former member of his staff.
The 7th District has been without a representative in Congress since Meehan stepped down in April.
The new 5th District covers the entire county, along with a part of South and Southwest Philadelphia, as well as a sliver of Montgomery County.
Likewise in Chester County, not everyone in the county was covered in the old 7th. Only those voters who lived in the 7th will vote in two districts.
Scanlon, 59, is pro bono counsel for Ballard Spahr and oversees 550 lawyers in 12 offices throughout the country as chair of its Pro Bono Committee. Previously, the Swarthmore resident served with the Education Law Center and the Support Center for Child Advocates. She also served as a member and president of the Wallingford-Swarthmore School Board.
Kim, 39, led the state Attorney General’s campus security initiative and headed the Human Trafficking Unit in the Special Victims and Domestic Violence Division in the Delaware County District Attorney’s Office. The Radnor resident helped secure the first human trafficking conviction in Pennsylvania and then helped craft new human trafficking legislation. After that was passed, she obtained the first conviction under that law.
The winner will replace former Meehan. The special election is important because if the winner of the special 7th District vote also is successful in the 5th voting, that representative will gain seniority over the other winners and new members of Congress by reason that they will have served for a few weeks before the next session.