KEYSTONE CROSSROADS -- Republican Dan Meuser, who was Gov. Tom Corbett's Secretary of Revenue, and Democrat Denny Wolff, agriculture secretary for Gov. Ed Rendell, won their respective primaries in Pennsylvania's ninth district Tuesday.
In each contest, the winner had the biggest war chest and and was his own top donor.
Meuser, who doesn't live in the district, was the moderate of the Republican field, as was Wolffcompared to his two competitors on the Democratic side.
The ninth is one of seven districts left wide open by incumbents declining to run again. Some were followinga national trendand/or encouraged to quit because their districts got more competitiveunder Pennsylvania's new congressional map.
But the new map gives Republicans an even stronger advatrnage in the ninth, which overlaps most with the former 11th, than before.
Meuser got 53 percent of votes, followed by Schuylkill County Commissioner George Halcovage with 24 percent and retired CIA and Navy officer and Trump delegate Scott Uehlinger with 23 percent, according to unofficial results from the Pennsylvania Department of State.
Wolff got 41 percent to Reading-area dentist Gary Wegman's 31 and UPS driver Laura Quick's 28 percent.
Libertarian John Burd, who's from Schuylkill County, also is running in the general election.