Courtesy Otten campaign
Pennsylvania state Rep. Danielle Friel Otten
Danielle Friel Otten fell into activism accidentally. She worked in marketing and hospitality and had just become a new mom. But then she learned something that startled her: The Mariner East pipeline, which takes fracked gas from Ohio and southwestern Pennsylvania to a refinery outside of Philadelphia, was set to run straight through her neighbor’s yard in Chester County.
The news shattered Otten’s false sense of faith the government would protect her community. “My question was, ‘How does something like this happen?’” she said. “I realized that there were a lot of forces in our government that weren’t worried about us.”
So Otten helped found Del-Chesco United for Pipeline Safety, a grassroots organization built to counter oil and gas industry special interests. Through her work, she discovered her local state representative was a beneficiary of the groups she was fighting. “She was not in Harrisburg working for our community, those campaign donations were driving the advocacy,” Otten said. She decided to run against that incumbent, standing as someone who wasn’t bought by corporations. Come November 2018, she won.
Progressives won state legislative primaries in Pennsylvania in 2018 against entrenched Democratic incumbents in the deep-blue cities of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. It made national headlines as part of a wave of progressives finding success across the country. But something even more eye-catching happened in the general election: Progressives in Pennsylvania went on to win against Republicans in the suburbs. Their wins challenged the idea that progressives can only be elected in big cities.
These once long-shot candidates are now incumbents facing a different political environment than they had when first elected. Instead of anger at a Republican president pushing Democrats over the finish line, an unpopular Democratic president makes re-election perilous.
But getting elected at first wasn’t easy either. While the suburbs have trended left for decades, they had conservative leans down-ballot. Otten was running against an incumbent who was re-elected just two years earlier with 58 percent of the vote.
State Sen. Katie Muth, who currently represents portions of two Philadelphia suburban counties, Chester and Montgomery, challenged four-term incumbent John Rafferty in 2018. In his previous re-election, he won 61 percent of the vote. Muth said that she didn’t even know who Rafferty was at the time. She only began organizing with a local Indivisible group in 2017 in reaction to former President Donald Trump’s election. “I decided to run and everybody’s like, ‘You’re never going to beat this guy,’” Muth said. “‘He goes to two different churches, every Boy Scout meeting, the police and fire like him.’”
Otten experienced a similar reaction trying to flip a district that was red for 20 years. “Everybody was a doubter,” she said. “I continue to have doubters.”
But progressive groups did have faith in Otten and Muth. Conservation Voters of Pennsylvania endorsed both candidates in 2018. “Historically, Chester County was this idyllic paradise,” said executive director Molly Parzen. “It was known for big gorgeous horse farms, open space.” With Mariner East set to run straight through it, the group saw it as a perfect place to invest in what Parzen calls environmental champions.
Courtesy Muth campaign
Supporters with Pennsylvania state Sen. Katie Muth (fourth from left)
Otten in particular got environmental groups excited. “Danielle has one of the most amazing, authentic, pro-environment paths to running for office that I’ve ever heard,” Parzen said. “Those are the kind of people who make the best pro-environment legislators, people who come to this fight with such personal reasons for doing so.”
Vanessa Clifford, the mid-Atlantic region political director at the Working Families Party, said that her organization liked that both candidates decided to run because of their lived experiences. “They were both never people who thought they would get involved politically, but became active out of necessity for what was going on in their communities and being fed up with the status quo,” she said.
To win in these districts, Otten and Muth both had to convince at least some voters who in the past voted Republican down-ballot. “I have people to this day who say, ‘I don’t agree with your politics, but I know that you’re a good person, and there for the right reason,’” Otten said. She thinks her past advocacy on Mariner East resonates with people, as they look at her as someone who cares for her community and went to the state capital to protect it. “I’m at baseball games and soccer games. Even when people don’t agree with me, we are raising our children side by side … I’ve had this brand that’s being ‘one of us.’”
Muth overcame the partisan advantage by knocking tons of doors. Some even started to recognize her after she’d knock a second or even a third time. “There was some respect earned,” she said. She has called out both parties (she calls the Capitol building in which she serves “the dome of corruption”) and admitted that Democrats sometimes can be a letdown, which she believes appeals to the vast swaths of independents in her district.
Since getting into the Senate, Muth routinely introduces amendments, one of the few ways she can get legislation considered as a member of the minority party. Those amendments are what she calls “some pretty fucking progressive shit,” and she’s pleased when her Democratic colleagues vote for them. “We’ve been in the minority for so long in the state legislature that sometimes (Democrats) don’t even fight,” she said. “Even though I’m in the minority, people know that I’m going to fight for them.”
Otten described a similar problem, but said that since the 2018 class of freshmen made it to the legislature, things are improving on the House side. She pointed to an increase in filing discharge petitions, a mechanism to force the chamber to consider legislation the majority’s leadership won’t bring up, as well as holding a Black Lives Matter protest on the House floor to demand police reform legislation. To Otten, it shows the caucus “really just being more strategic and organizing within our caucus to bring things to the forefront that the Republicans don’t want to talk about.”
Sometimes, the pressure Otten and Muth put on their own Democratic caucus to improve causes headaches for leadership. Muth understands this but doesn’t seem to particularly care. “I didn’t go to the Senate to make friends in the lunchroom,” she said. Instead, Muth at times has enraged her colleagues, especially when she read a letter from a formerly homeless man while opposing legislation to end a general assistance program for the poor. The clip went viral, though Muth didn’t mean it to: “I was just doing my job.”
On policy, Parzen called Muth, Otten, and other members elected in 2018 their closest allies on climate legislation. What she particularly appreciates is that these members aren’t just voting the right way, but they also are making climate central to their governing and campaigning.
“That person who is getting up and making a speech on the floor, in committee,” Parzen said. “Continuing to bring (climate) up in conversation, actively out there as public advocates.”
Undoubtedly, Republicans will try to use progressive politics and policies against both of these candidates this year. Otten’s opponent Kyle Scribner did not respond to a request for comment by the Prospect but has called Otten “too progressive” for the district. A campaign spokesperson for Muth’s opponent, Jessica Florio, said in a statement that the district isn’t interested in extreme viewpoints. “The voters are not looking for activists, like my opponent Senator Muth, who represent all that is wrong with politics today. This campaign is about removing one of the most toxic elements in our State Legislature, and replacing them with someone who is ready … to work with people from both sides of the aisle.”
Muth doesn’t mind the progressive title but believes trying to label people is just fear-mongering. While Florio attacks Muth’s “activist” record, that’s exactly what Muth’s betting on to win a second term, hoping voters see her as a fighter. Plus, of course, “knocking every door we can,” she said.
Matt Slocum/AP Photo
Pennsylvania state Sen. Katie Muth speaks during a rally to raise the state minimum wage, July 9, 2021, in Philadelphia.
Clifford believes the policies Otten and Muth champion aren’t even controversial, despite the labels. She thinks the majority of people almost anywhere aren’t in favor of pipelines running through their communities, or corporations dodging paying taxes. “They put the interest of people before corporations first, and I think that that message resonates,” she said. “You can call it too progressive for their district, but they won because the majority of the people agree with those concepts.”
Running and winning on these messages in difficult districts make it easier for those who come after. Clifford said at least part of the Working Families Party’s growth in Pennsylvania can be attributed to these and other candidates’ wins.
While both candidates after redistricting remain in seats won by President Biden by notable margins, with Muth’s district getting overall more Democratic, the once Republican lean of these seats could still threaten their re-elections in this national climate. But Otten sees national issues becoming an advantage for her campaign.
“The number one issue is Dobbs and abortion,” she said. Since the Supreme Court ruling, she’s seen more people and specifically more women turning up to volunteer and help her campaign. Localizing the abortion issue now that states control reproductive rights is a top priority for her team.
For progressives looking to replicate her success, Muth believes talking to people should be priority number one. “You can’t build trust on a slogan,” she said. “If you’re not willing to invest the time to listen to the people you want to represent, you shouldn’t run.”
Otten also had a simple tip. “Be yourself,” she said. “Telling your stories, being human … It doesn’t necessarily matter as much what you think about the marginal tax rate when people see your humanity.”
