COURTESY OF THE COMMITTEE TO ELECT JIM BREWSTER AND FRIENDS OF NICOLE ZICCARELLI
The fate of a state Senate seat in the Pittsburgh area remains in limbo even after the chamber started a new session Tuesday.
Republicans refused to swear in McKeesport Democrat Jim Brewster pending a court challenge from his November election opponent, Nicole Ziccarelli. But it is unclear when a ruling by U.S. District Judge Nicholas Ranjan will be forthcoming, or how senators in either party will react to it.
Brewster beat Ziccarelli, a Lower Burrell Republican, in the race for Senate District 45 by just 69 votes, according to state-certified returns. Key to the three-term incumbent’s victory was a batch of mail-in ballots that were cast on time in Allegheny County but without a handwritten date on an outer envelope. (The ballots were time-stamped upon their arrival at the county's election office, demonstrating that they had been received in time.) Without those ballots, Republicans say, Ziccarelli would have prevailed by 24 votes.