Schuylkill County Democrats received encouraging words from former Congressman Conor Lamb and honored recently retired Sheriff Joe Groody at their annual Kennedy Dinner on Friday.
Lamb flipped a red district in the Pittsburgh area during a 2018 special election and went on to win two more terms. He entered the U.S. Senate race in 2021 but was defeated in the Democratic primary by John Fetterman, who went on to win the general election.
“My gamble was that Pennsylvania was ready for a tall senator,” said Lamb, who towered over most if not all the people at the dinner at the Mountain Valley banquet hall in Barnesville. “The problem was I wasn’t the tallest one that you had to choose from.”
Assuming Fetterman seeks reelection in 2028, Lamb has been mentioned as a potential challenger but says he’s focused on getting Democrats elected in the midterm races.
After that, “we’ll see how the chessboard shakes out,” he said, although “I would really like to serve again.” Unlike his first run for Congress, however, he now is married with three children so “I think I’m making a slower decision this time.”
But when county Democratic Chair Todd Zimmerman asked whether Lamb should run against Fetterman, the audience responded with loud cheers and applause.
For his part, Lamb praised local Democratic candidates for their courage to run in a red district. “I’ve been there when people think that you can’t do it because your district is too red and they’re always going to vote for Trump,” he said.
He won his first congressional race by 700 votes out of 220,000 in a district that Trump took less than two years earlier with a 20-point margin.
“Don’t let anybody tell you that it can’t be done this year or any year because it absolutely can,” Lamb said in his keynote speech. “And the wind, I think, is at our backs.”
He did stress that the Democratic Party must do more than bash the Trump administration.
“We’re going to finally make the American dream accessible to people in the 21st Century,” he said. “We have to do things about artificial intelligence and about the climate and about cyber security and about all these challenges that didn’t exist before.
“And we need actual human beings to work on those things. And they’re going to want to work and do a good job if they’re well-paid and they can take care of their children and they can afford a house.
“It’s really not that much, but the other side isn’t offering it at all.”
Lamb received a standing ovation, as did Groody, who spent 49 years in local law enforcement and was county sheriff from 2010 until this year.
“I met a ton of real great people in this county and around the county,” he said. “I also met a lot of idiots, too.”
The event, which drew a record 131 attendees, also included tributes to four prominent Democrats who died in the past year: Patrick J. Carr; an active county committee member; former state Rep. Edward J. Lucyk; Northern Tier Democratic Club Vice President Stephen W. McCarthy; and former Pottsville Mayor John D.W. Reiley.
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