BEAVER, PA.- There was a saying among Democrats and Republicans alike here in western Pennsylvania when trying to assess which party will hold the majority in the House every two years that goes, “as goes PA-17, so goes the majority.”

PA-17 is of course the Pennsylvania 17th congressional district and because of its equal distribution of registered Republicans and Democrats and fairly equal mix of suburban college educated and working class voters it makes sense.

As one Democrat strategist who has worked on successful and non-successful races in different variations of this seat said, “If we are being honest, this is a seat each party rents, no one party can really say it is a Republican seat or a Democrat seat.”

Since January 2023, Rep. Chris Deluzio has held this seat. He won it in a not-so-tough race between him and Republican businessman Jeremy Schaffer in 2022; the seat had previously been held by Rep. Conor Lamb, a moderate Democrat, who decided earlier that year to seek the nomination for the Democratic Party in a primary for the U.S. Senate seat left open when Pat Toomey decided to not seek reelection.

A primary contest that fellow western Pennsylvanian John Fetterman ultimately won.

Deluzio, a former Navy officer who served in Iraq, returned to western Pennsylvania to become the University of Pittsburgh’s cyber policy director, is the father of three and lives in the river town suburb of Aspinwall. He is seeking his first reelection for the seat he won two years ago.

He faces Republican Rob Mercuri, a fellow military veteran, who attended West Point then, like Deluzio, returned to western Pennsylvania to work in finance, eventually starting a local business with his wife Kelsey. He shocked both his party and the Democrats when he ran as an unknown and won a highly competitive suburban Pittsburgh state house seat against Emily Skopov in 2020 that no one expected a Republican to win.

In that race Mercuri overperformed the top of a ticket that included President Donald Trump; he won again in 2022 against Democrat Alison Duncan.

PA-17 includes the upper middle class suburbs of Beaver County as well as the struggling working class cities of Aliquippa and Ambridge whose industrial greatness has declined significantly since the fall of manufacturing 30 years ago.

Beaver County’s Potter Township is also home of the Shell Cracker Plant, called an economic game-changer by both former governor’s Democrat Tom Wolf and Republican Tom Corbet The seat also includes large portions of the Allegheny County suburbs that are mostly white and affluent. Until last year’s Allegheny County executive race, the area had been trending Democrat.

Progressive firebrand Sara Innamorato was the eventual winner in that race, but Republican Joe Rockey, a low-key Republican, shocked local politicos on both sides when he bested Innamorato by large margins in numerous precincts in the suburbs that Democrats have been winning in the past eight years.

While Innamorato won, she won barely, giving some Democrats pause as to what that might mean for the race between Mercuri and Deluzio.

Currently the University of Virginia Center for Politics Crystal Ball has the seat rated Leans Democrat. Kyle Kondik, who is the managing editor and crunches the numbers, says nothing has changed to date on that assessment favoring Deluzio.

Since coming into office Deluzio has made a series of smart and not-so-smart decisions representing a district that is pretty middle-of-the-road for both parties. The most questionable of these being his decision to join the House Progressive Caucus right out of the gate in a district where Democrats are hardly full-throated progressives.

It is an association that has made several local Democrats scratch their heads because of the stridency of the chairwoman, Pramila Jayapal of Washington’s 7th Congressional District, as well as vice- chair Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota.

When Jayapal released the agenda for the Progressive Caucus late last month she said the 2025 Proposition Agenda would continue the progressive movement by “focusing on raising wages and lowering costs; correcting the inequality in our economic, education, and political systems to ensure economic, gender, and racial justice; continuing progress on the climate crisis.”

But Deluzio has also not been all about party over governing and has gone against the grain with his party. He crossed the aisle on the resolution to undo Biden’s solar tariff freeze, he opposed the Biden administration’s decision rule that would have forced the only grain-oriented steel core maker in the country in Butler County, and called for Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin to resign over the lack of transparency surrounding his previously undisclosed cancer diagnosis and subsequent hospitalization.

Mercuri, for his part, has been low-key, focusing on delivering a message of returning to economic prosperity, the impact of a porous border has on the community with a focus on the drug trade and the overdoses that go with it and a relentless pursuit of door knocking to get his message across to the voters of the 17th.

The Republican state representative could potentially benefit from two things, explained Chris Borick, political scientist at Muhlenberg College, speaking before President Joe  Biden announced he was leaving the race. “The strong showing Republicans had in last November’s local election in the suburbs and the potential drag Biden may have on down ballot races in the state,” he said. It is unknown, as yet, whether Biden’s replacement as nominee will have a different down ballot effect.

The other benefit Mercuri may be able to tap into is the change of voter registration in Beaver County; the historically Democratic county has seen a remarkable surge in registered Republican voters — so much so that for the first time in modern politics there are now more registered Republicans than Democrats in this all-important western Pennsylvania county.

In November of last year, Democrats out-registered Republicans in this county by over 2,000 voters — nine months later the Republicans now outnumber Democrats by about the same amount, a 4000 voter swing in favor of the GOP.

Democrats still outnumber Republicans within the 17th congressional district by 60,000 voters according to Pennsylvania department of state data.

In the days and weeks since Biden had his disastrous debate, pressure mounted from some congressional members, Hollywood, and donors for him to step aside from seeking reelection. Right until Biden finally announced he was stepping down on Sunday, Deluzio — like most of the elected officials in the state that includes Sen. Bob Casey, Gov. Josh Shapiro and Sen. John Fetterman — stood with him.

Borick said while Pennsylvania voters do split their votes and in theory Deluzio could be safe if Trump wins Pennsylvania — it depends how hard the dam breaks away from Biden’s successor and how much the cover-up of the president’s decline implicates members of Congress who met with him personally, “If voters start to question which members of the House and Senate who knew of Biden’s challenges remain silent, although that is probably more troublesome for Casey than Deluzio, because of the perception that Casey has been close to Biden for years.”

Salena Zito is a national political reporter at the Washington Examiner who lives in western Pennsylvania.