It has all the el­e­ments of a high-pro­file con­gres­sio­nal race in No­vem­ber: pro­voc­a­tive ads, mil­lions of dol­lars in fund­rais­ing and cam­paign spend­ing, and two can­di­dates — a fa­vored in­cum­bent and de­ter­mined chal­lenger — who have ex­changed ver­bal blows over na­tional hot-but­ton is­sues, in­clud­ing the Is­rael-Ha­mas war, dark money and sup­port for Pres­i­dent Joe Biden.

Ex­cept it's the Demo­cratic pri­mary in April.

Sum­mer Lee, a fresh­man pro­gres­sive who rep­resents Pitts­burgh and its east­ern and south­ern sub­urbs, aims to with­stand a chal­lenge by Bha­vini Pa­tel, a more mod­er­ate Edge­wood bor­ough coun­cil mem­ber. The win­ner likely will be the fa­vor­ite against Re­pub­li­can James Hayes in the gen­eral elec­tion in No­vem­ber.

Lee, 36, has de­manded an un­con­di­tional cease-­fire in the Is­rael-Ha­mas war, a po­lit­i­cally risky stance in a dis­trict that in­cludes one of the most prom­i­nent Jew­ish en­claves in Penn­syl­va­nia. Pitts­burgh-area Jew­ish lead­ers have re­peat­edly sent let­ters to Lee crit­i­ciz­ing her stance on the war and urg­ing her to more force­fully de­nounce an­tisem­i­tism.

Mul­ti­ple vot­ers told the Pittsburgh Post-Ga­zette that while the Is­rael-Ha­mas is­sue is im­por­tant, it's not the only one in the race.

Pa­tel, 30, says her op­po­nent is not a true rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Demo­cratic vot­ers in the dis­trict, claim­ing a more mod­er­ate voice in Wash­ing­ton would be more ef­fec­tive, and she says Lee has failed to ade­quately back Biden in a pres­i­den­tial-elec­tion year.

And she says she also has tried to pin down Lee on more local issues, but Lee continues to turn the contest into one heavy on national topics.

Lee has pil­lo­ried Pa­tel for hav­ing the sup­port of Re­pub­li­cans, in­clud­ing at least one con­ser­va­tive PAC funded by a Phil­a­del­phia-area bil­lion­aire. Pa­tel's sup­port­ers counter that much of Lee's so-called grass­roots sup­port is money com­ing from out­side the dis­trict.

Lee's ini­tial vic­tory in the 2022 Demo­cratic pri­mary was a five-can­di­date nail-biter in which she beat Steve Ir­win, a for­mer state of­fi­cial, by fewer than 1,000 votes. But de­spite her pro­voc­a­tive na­ture and pro­gres­sive views — some of which have caught the ire of Demo­cratic vot­ers around the dis­trict — she's still the in­cum­bent.

And in a head-to-head race, even against a lo­cal elected of­fi­cial like Pa­tel, it's al­ways dif­fi­cult to beat some­one in of­fice, es­pe­cially in a pri­mary.

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