Editorial: No time for election victory laps

In Washington, D.C., it took about a week to discover which party would have the majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, with attention pulled to races in Colorado and California before the balance finally tipped.

The Republicans would take back the House from Democratic hands by a narrow margin.

In Pennsylvania, the same question played out. It took even longer to sort out the votes in the counties surrounding Philadelphia before a vote for Melissa Ceratto in Montgomery County’s 151st District took the state House of Representatives out of GOP control for the first time in 12 years.

The margin is equally narrow. At the moment, it’s a theoretical majority. Three Democratic seats in Southwestern Pennsylvania are — or will be — vacant: the 32nd District won by the late Tony DeLuca, the 34th District of Congresswoman-elect Summer Lee and the 35th District of Lt. Gov.-elect Austin Davis, all Democrats. Those seats will have special elections, leaving Republicans in the majority until likely March.

Nationwide, Republicans are crowing about their win and making plans for advancing agendas and settling scores.

In the Keystone State, Democrats are just as cocky.

The Senate — both federal and state — is more certain but again not a broad majority.

In Washington, it is the breadth of one vote on the Democrats’ side, with the shoring up of Vice President Kamala Harris as a tie-breaker and an unsettled Georgia race pending. In Pennsylvania, the Republicans maintain a wider 28-22 victory — a half-dozen votes that seem an absolute luxury in comparison to the national numbers.

In Harrisburg and Washington, the lawmakers need to pay attention to the numbers. These were not landslides. Every legislator needs to pay less attention to the party caucus and more attention to the needs of the homegrown voters.

It is not the Democratic Party that should dictate Lee’s votes. It is the people of Pittsburgh. It is not the GOP that should steer state Senate President Pro Tempore Kim Ward’s decisions. It is the people of Hempfield. And it is not the pundits to whom Sen.-elect John Fetterman owes his new job. It’s the voters of Pennsylvania.

Regardless of party, these people want and need the same things: jobs, economic stability, education, health care, safety. All of these need not to be viewed as partisan issues but as the absolute baseline for legislative focus.

In the wake of the election and in the midst of transition, the party rhetoric on both sides is thick with bluster, like trash-talking in the aftermath of a football win. That needs to be silenced in favor of brokering peace.

The margins are too thin for victory laps and vendettas, and the stakes are too high. Do your jobs. All of you.