As expected, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf has ordered the special election for the final two months of former Rep. Pat Meehan's term to take place on Nov. 6, concurrently with the state's regularly scheduled general elections. That means there will be simultaneous elections in the old 7th District and its successor, the new 5th. But because the 7th was so infamously gerrymandered, this actually means that voters in six different new districts (including the 5th) will see the special election for the old 7th on their ballots.
Strange as this scenario may seem, we've seen situations like this play out before: In the redistricting year of 2012, it happened in four separate districts. But there's still a question of who's going to run in this race. Pennsylvania doesn't conduct primaries for special elections, so it's likely that party leaders will name the winners of the May 15 primary for the 5th as the nominees for the 7th. However, it's always possible that things could unfold differently, and sometimes, nominees for the regular elections don't want to run in the corresponding special.
That's what went down in Michigan's 11th District six years ago, when GOP Rep. Thad McCotter resigned in humiliating fashion after failing to submit enough signatures to qualify for the ballot. Democrat Syed Taj, who went on to win the nomination for the regular election, declined to run in the special, saying he wanted to focus his efforts on the main race.
Democrats instead put up union leader David Curson for the special, and in an interesting twist, he actually beat Republican Kerry Bentivolio, who'd notoriously lucked into the GOP nomination after McCotter's debacle. Curson went on to spend seven weeks in Congress and even managed to earn some favorable attention from Nancy Pelosi during his brief tenure, after which he retired from politics altogether.
On the very same day Curson won, though, Taj lost to Bentivolio, though it's important to note that the new version of the 11th in which Taj ran was considerably redder than the old one where Curson ran. (Taj, a Muslim immigrant from India, may also have been a victim of racism and religious bigotry: Republicans ran foul attack ads that all but insinuated he was in league with terrorists.)
In Pennsylvania, the script is flipped: The old district is more Republican than the new one, and it's also much more spread out. It's therefore possible that the winner of the Democratic primary for the 5th simply won't want the distraction of also being on the ballot in the 7th. On the other hand, if the same person wins both races, he or she would have a small leg up in seniority among the freshman class in the 116th Congress. In any event, we'll know who's running soon enough.