The way Rob Teplitz saw it, he had been very patient by the time he finally rose to his feet one spring afternoon in 2014 to air a grievance on the floor of the Pennsylvania state Senate.
Teplitz, a career lawyer, was one of the chamber’s newest members—and intent on showing that he would not be a meek member of the Democratic minority. He is used to asserting himself. The cherubic-faced freshman legislator hears frequently that he looks young for his 45 years. His typical response: “You should’ve seen me before I entered politics.”
“I have to constantly assure people that I am old enough to drive and to serve in office,” said Teplitz recently, half-closing his eyes in exasperation. “It’s something that has actually irritated me my entire life. I’m thrilled that I am finally getting gray hair.”
Teplitz was in the Senate GOP’s crosshairs even before he was sworn into office. His election in 2012 made him the first Democrat to win the 15th Senate district since 1936, according to state records.
“The Republicans held this seat for almost 100 years straight,” said Teplitz. “They want it back.”
Now, Harrisburg’s state senator is headed into a reelection campaign as he comes to the end of his first four-year term. How is he doing?
His colleagues confirm that the Republican majority goes out of its way to prevent him from passing legislation of his own—even the minor, provincial bills that assign names to roads and bridges. Political expediency is not the only explanation for this.
“There’s a huge target on my back,” said Teplitz, “and the reason for that is because I haven’t played this game where the safest thing for a minority freshman to do… would be to just keep your mouth shut and not do anything controversial.”
Back in May of 2014, Teplitz stood before his Senate colleagues to lodge a complaint. The highly structured rules of a Senate session relax once the day’s voting is done, and members can speak in protest or otherwise go off-topic on the public record.
Teplitz had been promised the legislature would move one of his proposals. But now it was stuck in committee, and he couldn’t get it out. Specifically, Teplitz felt betrayed by Pat Vance, a veteran Republican senator who had the power to advance the measure. (The Senate Democratic minority leader, who witnessed the two lawmakers strike their compromise, recently told me, hesitantly, that Teplitz was indeed being shafted.)
“This place cannot function if people do not keep their agreements,” Teplitz said. “I do not know if it makes it more or less likely for me to succeed on this resolution, perhaps less likely.”
Perhaps. State legislators, especially in the traditionally decorous Senate, speak in code on the chamber floor. Comments that are necessarily elliptical under the Senate’s rules of debate are parsed according to political context and interpersonal squabbles. Teplitz’s comments were perceived as a character assassination of Vance, the committee chair who he felt had wronged him.
“Oh, it was combative,” said Vance, whose Cumberland County district sits just across the river from Teplitz’s turf. “I have lots of faults, but I don’t lie and I think most people know I’m pretty straight… it was like he was attacking me because I wouldn’t agree with him. And I thought that was very foolish.”
Nearly two years after his cri de coeur, Teplitz has no regrets.
“I reject the notion that I did anything inappropriate,” he said. “We had a professional disagreement, and I’m comfortable that I handled it professionally.” But publicly questioning the integrity of a longtime Republican senator won him no friends on the other side of the aisle.
Despite Teplitz’s unofficial status on the Republican blacklist, the Harrisburg mayor considers him to be an effective advocate for the city. Teplitz pushed for Harrisburg to receive $5 million from the state, ostensibly for fire protection services (the money also helps the city balance its budget, and there is talk of increasing the aid to plug Harrisburg’s spending shortfall). The sum, however, is contained in the state budget bill, and Teplitz, who took office during the austere years of the Corbett administration, has never voted for a budget.
Can you take credit for a line item in a spending plan you voted against? Teplitz says you can. A budget that underfunds education, as he believes the past several state budgets did, is not going to win his vote just because it includes a hard-won appropriation for Harrisburg.
“I never misled anyone or gave anyone the expectation that I would vote for it,” he said.
Teplitz’s particular district poses yet another challenge to his reelection.
During his 2012 campaign, the 15th Senate district covered most of southern Dauphin County (excluding much of the northern part of the county), encompassed Harrisburg and Hershey, and curled into York County. That was before the state’s latest redistricting plans took effect.
The redrawn district looks like a handgun pointing down and to the left. The trigger is the city of Harrisburg, the grip reaches east of Hershey, the rear sight covers northern Dauphin County, and the barrel extends into all of rural Perry County—“very Republican” territory, according to a former Senate aide, and “much tougher” to win for a Democrat. Despite that, Teplitz faces a familiar primary opponent, Alvin Taylor, who was on the Democratic ticket in 2012. Two Republicans, Andrew Lewis and John DiSanto, are running for Teplitz’s seat.
“I think he will come out victorious, but black and blue,” said Patty Kim, a House Democrat elected the same year as Teplitz. “Perry County and the city of Harrisburg don’t have a lot in common.”
Teplitz gravitates to issues the two regions may have in common. Some of his nearest and dearest policy concerns (municipal finance, government reform) are decidedly non-partisan in nature and reflect his years of experience as a top lawyer for the state auditor general’s office, a government watchdog agency.
On issues that tend to sort lawmakers into neat camps (Republican/Democrat, rural/urban), he falls into the urban Democrat model: he supports greater funding for education; he has voted against the most recent state pension overhaul. But his district is not a slam-dunk for an urban Democrat, and so he has to be careful. On the subject of tax increases (which could help fund schools and overdue pension costs) proposed by the Democratic governor, Teplitz says only that he’s “open-minded.”
Teplitz’s new district is not a classic gerrymandered monstrosity that jilts a minority-party lawmaker. The new lines satisfy the most basic requirement that the district be compact and contiguous. It’s also not nuts to think people living in Perry County and much of Dauphin County have common interests. What the district seems to require in a successful senator is political moderation. What this looks like up close might be better described as political omnivorism—taking a little bit from different parts of the menu. For Harrisburg Mayor Eric Papenfuse, this was on display at the most recent Pennsylvania Farm Show. Teplitz was there almost every day, and his staff was on hand to give out legislative information and other swag—Pennsylvania trivia and recipe books, but also gun logs and shooting targets. The materials were selected, Teplitz said, based on the Farm Show’s audience, which includes sportsmen.
This was of note to Papenfuse who, like Teplitz, is a staunch Democrat but who, unlike Teplitz, has harsh words for the National Rifle Association these days.
“I’m saying this was sort of clever,” said Papenfuse. “I think that people were coming up to him at the Farm Show and saying, ‘Those Democrats, they are just awful, right?’ And he’d smile.”
Mary Wilson is WITF’s state Capitol Bureau chief. Her reports are heard on public radio stations throughout Pennsylvania.
