Ber­wood Yost, a po­lit­i­cal sci­ence pro­fes­sor who also runs pub­lic poll­ing at Frank­lin & Mar­shall Col­lege, said be­cause the pres­i­den­tial and U.S. Senate pri­mary races are al­ready de­cided state­wide, turn­out be­tween those two groups of vot­ers be­comes more of a fac­tor.

"Al­le­gheny County has shown a will­ing­ness to send can­di­dates to of­fice who are a bit more pro­gres­sive than other parts of the state," Yost said. "It comes down to these two fac­tions, and how large of a pool of vot­ers turn out on Elec­tion Day or mail in their bal­lots on Elec­tion Day, within each of those fac­tions."

Con­ser­va­tive money vs. pro­gres­sive do­nors

In con­gres­sio­nal races, fund­rais­ing and ad spend­ing are an in­di­ca­tor of how com­pet­i­tive a chal­lenger is try­ing to be, ver­sus how well an in­cum­bent has used the in­sti­tu­tional ad­van­tages of a fed­eral of­fice to win re-elec­tion.

This race is no dif­fer­ent — but the amount of money in it, since the be­gin­ning of the year and be­fore then, is con­sid­er­able, eas­ily reach­ing mil­lions of dol­lars.

Lee has raised about $1.4 mil­lion since the be­gin­ning of the year, far out­pac­ing her op­po­nent's to­tal of nearly $700,000.

Pa­tel has ben­e­fit­ed from TV ads that at­tack Lee for be­ing too pro­gres­sive for the 12th Dis­trict and for not sup­port­ing Biden in a pres­i­den­tial elec­tion year, spots that are be­ing run by Mod­er­ate PAC, which is not af­fil­i­ated with Pa­tel's cam­paign. Jef­frey Yass, a Re­pub­li­can megado­nor and re­port­edly a fron­t-run­ner for U.S. Trea­sury sec­re­tary if for­mer pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump wins elec­tion this year, has re­cently con­trib­uted $800,000 to that PAC.

But the con­gress­woman has called on pro­gres­sive groups like the Work­ing Fam­i­lies Party, Sun­rise Move­ment and Justice Dem­o­crats to coun­ter­act — and sur­pass — the in­vest­ment made by Yass and other do­nors look­ing to un­seat her.

Lee also has the ad­van­tage of one out­side group stay­ing out of the race so far: the Amer­i­can Is­rael Pub­lic Af­fairs Com­mit­tee, or AIPAC. In 2022, that group spent about $4 mil­lion to try to keep Lee out of of­fice. It has spent noth­ing on the race this year. That could be a sign, some strategists say, that Lee has a comfortable lead.

Despite the bag­gage that may come with sup­port from the Mod­er­ate PAC, get­ting one's mes­sage out is bet­ter than peo­ple not know­ing about you or your can­di­dacy.

"Bha­vini Pa­tel is not a house­hold name be­fore this," said Borick. "If you want to have a de­cent chance of pull­ing off an up­set and knock­ing off an in­cum­bent, it can't be over­stated, the im­por­tance (of that fund­ing_."

Can­di­dates make their fi­nal push

A gen­eral con­sen­sus among a small sam­ple of vot­ers and po­lit­i­cal watch­ers is that this Demo­cratic pri­mary is Lee's race to lose. She is cur­rently in of­fice, has an im­pres­sive war chest, has taken the jabs from Pa­tel's cam­paign and has a ded­i­cated voter base in the dis­trict.

"We're go­ing to say to peo­ple, whether it's AIPAC or Jeff Yass or who­ever and how­ever they pres­ent them­selves, that this isn't how we want pol­i­tics run in our com­mu­nity," Lee said at a re­cent event hosted by Justice Dem­o­crats back­ing her and other mem­bers of the "Squad" — a group of some of the most pro­gres­sive rep­re­sen­ta­tives in Con­gress. Lee en­cour­aged vot­ers to turn out for or do­nate to such can­di­dates — in­clud­ing her­self.

"The power of the peo­ple will pre­vail," she said.

Pa­tel says she finds it "shock­ing" that Lee re­fuses to de­nounce a co­or­di­nated ef­fort by pro-Pal­es­tin­ian groups to per­suade vot­ers to write in "un­com­mit­ted" rather than cast a vote for Biden.

"The fact that we have a sit­ting con­gress­woman who rep­resents a crit­i­cal re­gion where we need to ad­vance turn­out ... it's quite frankly very shock­ing that she's un­able to de­nounce the un­com­mit­ted move­ment," Pa­tel said dur­ing a re­cent de­bate.

Ul­ti­mately, Pa­tel has to convince enough vot­ers in the 12th Dis­trict that as a mod­er­ate, she is a bet­ter op­tion. But pro­gres­sives don't live ex­clu­sively in the city, and vot­ers else­where in the dis­trict have seen Lee in their com­mu­ni­ties.

One of them, a 43-year-old Pitts­burgh teacher who lives in West Mif­f­lin, used to live in the same neigh­bor­hood as Lee in Swiss­vale, years ago. She doesn't know Lee per­son­ally, but has seen her in the com­mu­nity, in­clud­ing when Lee was a state rep­re­sen­ta­tive, and supports her.

"I've seen her ded­i­ca­tion ... she was al­ways out at those events," said that voter, who asked that her name not be used because she feared repercussions at her school. "She sup­ported her dis­trict dur­ing COVID. I can speak to Sum­mer's char­ac­ter per­son­ally."

The election will be held in 10 days — plenty of time for people to make a decision or change their minds. Mail-in bal­lots may be in peo­ple's hands, but some are still mull­ing their op­tions.

Joseph Sabino Mi­s­tick, a law pro­fes­sor at Duquesne Univer­sity and chief of staff to for­mer Mayor So­phie Masloff, said Lee has name rec­og­ni­tion over Pa­tel. Whether that helps her win is up to Dem­o­crats in the dis­trict.

"For bet­ter or worse, (Lee) is def­i­nitely aligned with the pro­gres­sive move­ment and the Squad," Mi­s­tick said. "To some ex­tent, her race may be a ref­er­en­dum on that form of pro­gres­siv­ism."

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