Drilling Critic Locked In Tight State House Race

Scott Detrow

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Scott Detrow is a congressional correspondent for NPR. He also co-hosts the NPR Politics Podcast.

Detrow joined NPR in 2015 to cover the presidential election. He focused on the Republican side of the 2016 race, spending time on the campaign trail with Donald Trump, and also reported on the election's technology and data angles.

Detrow worked as a statehouse reporter for member stations WITF in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and KQED in San Francisco, California. He has also covered energy policy for NPR's StateImpact project, where his reports on Pennsylvania's hydraulic fracturing boom won a DuPont-Columbia and national Edward R. Murrow Award in 2013.

November 7, 2012 | 2:01 PM

When Democrats unsuccessfully pushed for a severance tax on natural gas drilling in 2009 and 2010, Allegheny County Representative David Levdansky led the charge to place a levy on gas extraction.
Levdansky lost his seat in 2010, but tried to recapture it this year. As the Associated Press reports, Levdansky and Republican Rick Saccone are currently separated by just three dozen votes:

Unofficial election returns show western Pennsylvania Republican state Rep. Rick Saccone with a 36-vote lead over Democratic challenger David Levdansky.
Absentee and provisional ballots must still be counted next week in the district which includes parts of Allegheny and Washington counties.
The Allegheny County Board of Elections must certify the results which, so far, show Mr. Saccone with 14,274 votes to 14,238 for Mr. Levdansky.
Mr. Levdansky held the 39th District seat for 25 years before he lost it two years ago to Mr. Saccone.