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.

"There's enor­mous value in in­cum­bency," said Chris Borick, a po­lit­i­cal sci­ence pro­fes­sor at Muhlen­berg Col­lege. "You've suc­ceeded in win­ning a pri­mary be­fore, and you have higher name rec­og­ni­tion. You've built up re­la­tion­ships within your dis­trict while serv­ing in of­fice ... those are ma­jor fac­tors."

Those con­nec­tions have been a hall­mark of Lee's mes­sag­ing: that she's served com­mu­ni­ties ef­fec­tively across the ex­panse of the 12th Con­gres­sio­nal Dis­trict.

It's also part of what Pa­tel has used as am­mu­ni­tion on the de­bate stage: that her op­po­nent is too far to the left to rep­resent the area.

It's an ar­gu­ment that will need to stick if Pa­tel is to have a chance. And she must get Dem­o­crats to turn out in the far-flung ar­eas of the dis­trict — and in Squir­rel Hill, one area where she has seized on her dif­fer­ences with Lee.

"Pa­tel knows where she needs to get her votes from ... turn­out is go­ing to be very im­por­tant," said Larry Ceisler, a pub­lic af­fairs ex­ec­u­tive based in Phil­a­del­phia who tracks var­i­ous races across Penn­syl­va­nia.

De­mo­graph­ics: Squir­rel Hill and be­yond

An ad­age of pol­i­tics is that a pro­fu­sion of yard signs isn't nec­es­sar­ily an ac­cu­rate ba­rom­e­ter for which way an elec­tion might go — be­cause yard signs don't vote.

But in the case of the Bha­vini Pa­tel signs in and around Squir­rel Hill, they're at least an in­di­ca­tion that she has gained trac­tion with vot­ers in that neigh­bor­hood. Mul­ti­ple res­i­dents con­firmed last week that Pa­tel has their votes.

The two can­di­dates have sparred re­peat­edly over the U.S. in­volve­ment in the Is­rael-Ha­mas war.

Pa­tel says Lee has ig­nored Jew­ish con­cerns in Squir­rel Hill since Ha­mas' at­tack on Is­rael and be­fore­hand. The in­cum­bent count­ers by say­ing she has al­ways trav­eled across the dis­trict and talked with lead­ers of var­i­ous re­li­gious in­sti­tu­tions and be­liefs.

If yard signs and a small sam­pling of Squir­rel Hill Dem­o­crats are any in­di­ca­tor, Pa­tel ap­pears primed to win the neigh­bor­hood.

Judy Kenal, 67, said she "was ex­tremely im­pressed with Bha­vini's track record of com­mu­nity ser­vice." And the 14th Ward Inde­pen­dent Demo­cratic Club, which backed Lee dur­ing her run for state rep­re­sen­ta­tive in 2018 and again for Con­gress in 2022, de­cided re­cently to back the chal­lenger.

Jane Louik, a club vice pres­i­dent who runs the elec­tion en­dorse­ment pro­cess, said an in­flux of new mem­bers in the six weeks be­fore the vote — at least 120 peo­ple — has helped tilt the scales in fa­vor of Pa­tel. Louik said she per­son­ally sup­ports Lee but has seen a great shift in think­ing in the club in the weeks lead­ing up to the vote April 23.

And Louik said the Pa­tel en­dorse­ment is a bit more nu­anced than the me­dia is por­tray­ing it.

"I can't tell if it's more anti-Lee or if it's pro-Is­rael ... (be­cause) some of the new mem­bers who want to elect Pa­tel have some mis­giv­ings about (Is­raeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­ja­min) Netan­yahu," Louik said. "I think there are a num­ber of rea­sons."

Despite the at­ten­tion in Squir­rel Hill, it is just one neigh­bor­hood of a dis­trict that stretches well be­yond the con­fines of Pitts­burgh, out into the Mon Val­ley and the strip malls and sub­urbs of east­ern Al­le­gheny and west­ern West­more­land coun­ties.

In some ways, Lee is try­ing to na­tion­al­ize a lo­cal race, while Pa­tel is try­ing to ap­peal to enough vot­ing groups in the dis­trict to win, ac­cord­ing to po­lit­i­cal ob­serv­ers.

A sam­pling of a few dozen vot­ers across the dis­trict in­di­cates many still want to do more re­search be­fore vot­ing, even if they're lean­ing one way or an­other.

But there are likely two ma­jor fac­tions: a pro­gres­sive base an­chored in Pitts­burgh and the im­me­di­ate sub­urbs ver­sus more mod­er­ate vot­ers who may want to shift to a less po­lar­iz­ing, more mod­er­ate can­di­date.

Pro­gres­sives tend to turn out heav­ily in pri­ma­ries, po­lit­i­cos said. That means Lee will be dif­fi­cult to beat, un­less Pa­tel can draw mod­er­ate vot­ers to the polls.

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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