Brewster won re-election on Allegheny County s 45th Senate District by a razor-thin margin of 69 votes.
Nicole Ziccarelli, Brewster s Republican opponent from November, challenged the results in federal court after losing a challenge in state court. She claimed the results were not valid because votes were counted differently in the two counties spanning the district.
For example, Westmoreland County did not count ballots that weren t properly date marked on an outer envelope, but Allegheny County did count ballots that weren t properly date marked on the outer envelope.
U.S. District Judge J. Nicholas Ranjan in a 14-page ruling on Tuesday said his court was “bound by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s interpretation of this state law which directly applies to the very ballots at issue here.”
Candy Woodall
USA TODAY Network Pennsylvania Capitol Bureau
Jake Corman and John Fetterman had a cordial discussion before the start of a bitter legislative session Tuesday.
Fetterman, a Democrat who presides over the state Senate as lieutenant governor, and Corman, a Republican who was on the verge of formally becoming the Senate president pro tempore, maintained a civil conversation despite starkly different beliefs about the fate of the 45th Senate district seat.
But the good tidings didn t last, leading to a remarkable floor fight that ended in Fetterman s removal as the Senate s presiding officer. The move made national headlines and signaled the beginning of what may be a bitterly divided legislative session amid a politically divisive national landscape.
What would normally be a rite of passage in the Pennsylvania Senate, with members being sworn in at the start of a new legislative session, quickly devolved Tuesday into a partisan fight.
Senators returned to Harrisburg and the battle soon started: first over masks and whether state senators should wear them on the Senate floor.
Then it took a sharper turn to whether incumbent Sen. Jim Brewster, a Democrat from McKeesport, Allegheny County, should be seated after a close victory last November.
And the fight reached its pinnacle when a vote was held by the Republican-controlled chamber to replace Democratic Lt. Gov. John Fetterman as president of the Senate.