Republican National Committee spokesperson Kayleigh McEnany has a warning about Conor Lamb after his win in Pennsylvania’s 18th district special election—he will still vote as a Democrat despite running like a Republican.
“Conor Lamb ran as a Republican,” she told Fox News’s Bill Hemmer. “He said, 'I’m not running against Trump, but I am running against Nancy Pelosi.' How extraordinary is that, a Democrat running against his own soon-to-be Democratic leadership if he wins. He said he was pro-gun, he said he was pro-coal, he said he was personally pro-life. He was a Republican in name, but I can promise you he will vote like a Democrat in Congress."
Democrats, including Lamb, have disputed that characterization, arguing the race was a local matter.
Regardless, House Speaker Paul Ryan and McEnany noted the significance of the fact that there was no primary.
“This is something that you’re not going to see repeated because they didn’t have a primary,” Ryan said. “They were able to pick a candidate who could run as a conservative, who ran against the minority leader, who ran on a conservative agenda. You will have primaries in all these other races, and the primaries bring them to the left. I just don’t think this is something they’re going to be able to see a repeat of.”
McEnany agreed, noting that if he had faced a challenger, he likely would’ve lost to a more liberal Democrat.
"He adopted pro-Trump talking points and that could prevail across the nation. The point is, the Conor Lambs of the world are a dying breed, if not extinct," she said.
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