Josh Parsons addresses historic special election loss, weighs another state Senate bid in 2026

• By Jaxon White/LNP | LancasterOnline

Republican Josh Parsons hasn’t ruled out making another run for the state Senate, just weeks after he suffered a historic special election loss to Democrat James Malone.

Parsons, 50, said it was “too early to say” for certain whether he’d run again for the 36th Senatorial District, but that he would “not close the door on it either.”

“The run was never about me, it was about fixing Harrisburg and making it actually serve the people, so I would be happy to support another grassroots conservative candidate who is focused on the same things,” Parsons said.

The GOP will likely begin its formal search for its next nominee by the end of the year, given the unexpired term Malone was elected to fill runs through 2026.

Some county Republicans have said Parsons’ polarizing personality hurt the party’s chances of success in the special election, and that another candidate might have fared better than he did. He defeated state Rep. Brett Miller during the Republican nomination process this winter after former state Sen. Ryan Aument resigned from his seat in December.

Though Democrats accounted for just 55% of the total mail ballots requested, Malone won 70% of the mail vote. While not definitive proof that a sizable portion of the GOP mail vote went to Malone, it appears he got at least some in a race that came down to just 526 overall votes.

Stella Sexton, co-chair for Malone’s campaign and vice-chair of the county Democratic committee, said seeing the bulk of those mail-in returns early on election night was a sign that Malone was going to win the race. She said the number of Republicans who voted for Malone was “far more than we had been expecting.”

But Parsons largely blamed energy among the Democratic Party for his loss. The three-term county commissioner pointed to Democrats’ success in other special elections in historically red areas in Florida and the Wisconsin Supreme Court race this year to make his point.

“Republican voters understandably feel good about where we are in the nation — we won everything last year and feel satisfied,” Parson said. “Meanwhile, Democrats, and even some liberal ‘Republicans,’ were electrified with intensity to strike back against our conservative wins.”

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READ: Incoming Democratic Pa. Sen. James Malone backs bill to restrict trans women, girl athletes

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‘An underlying wave’

Parsons, a vocal critic of Pennsylvania’s law establishing no-excuse voting by mail, suggested that Republican candidates in this year’s municipal elections embrace the mail-in ballot process to win over low-propensity voters.

He noted that his campaign sent some 10,000 handwritten postcards to mail-in ballot voters and 250,000 political mailers to likely voters urging them to support his candidacy. According to Parsons, that’s in addition to a similar 120,000 texts and tens of thousands of phone calls.

“All of this, however, did not compare to the underlying intensity on the other side to strike back against the Republican wins last year,” Parsons said.

Parsons said his campaign had erroneous polling results that indicated he’d likely win the special election by about 15 percentage points — the same margin President Donald Trump won by in the 36th in November.

“(Malone’s) campaign did not attack us — it essentially just talked about national issues,” Parsons said. “Thus, we saw no significant reason for our poll to be substantially wrong.”

Parsons noted the poll missed “an underlying wave on the other side.”

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READ: What Democrat James Malone’s surprise win in Lancaster County means for the 2026 midterms

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Scheduling conflict

Parsons also blamed the March 25 date of the special election for his defeat. He alleged that Lt. Gov. Austin Davis, a Democrat with the authority to set a special election date to fill any vacancies in the Senate, set the date for “political reasons rather than nonpartisan election administration reasons.”

Parsons said scheduling the special election to coincide with the May 20 primary would have increased Republican turnout “several points higher.”

Sexton, responding to Parsons’ complaint, said, “It’s not like (Democratic) opposition to Trump would have waned with another month on the calendar.”

The March 25 special election saw a 29% voter turnout rate among those in the 36th District, which covers much of northern Lancaster County. That was slightly higher than the 2021 municipal primary’s countywide 28%, which in turn was twice the turnout recorded in the 2017 and 2019 primaries.

In a statement announcing the special election date in January, Davis said he did so aiming to guarantee the more than 260,000 residents of the 36th a voice in state budget negotiations, which largely happen in June.

Kirstin Alvanitakis, spokeswoman for Davis, on Tuesday dismissed Parsons’ criticism as “ridiculous,” saying Davis worked with Senate leaders from both parties to schedule the special election.

“The voters of Lancaster County have spoken, loud and clear, that they want a senator who will bring people together, not divide us,” Alvanitakis said. “Public servants should listen to the voters, in victory and defeat.”