The Pennsylvania Department of State, Bureau of Elections, is reporting Dr. Gary Steven Wegman of Reading has won the Democratic nomination for the 9th Congressional District.

He will face incumbent Rep. Daniel P. Meuser of Dallas, Luzerne County, in the Nov. 3 general election. A two-year term is up for grabs.

With 100 percent of the votes having been tabulated, Wegman was declared the winner of a two-person race over Susan Laura Quick of Lebanon County by a margin of 1,066 votes. The totals show Wegman having received 27,451 votes, compared to Quick’s 26,385 (50.99 percent-49.01 percent).

Meuser was unopposed in pursuit of his second two-year term and received 77,350 complimentary votes from Republican voters.

The district was realigned after the 2010 Census under the Republican-controlled Legislature, which gerrymandered the district to be strongly in favor of the GOP in registration and includes all of Carbon, Columbia, Lebanon, Montour and Schuylkill counties and parts of Berks, Luzerne and Northumberland counties.

Wegman’s strength in his home county of Berks was primarily responsible for him having survived the two-person race. In Berks, he was the winner by a vote of 14,182 to 3,675. He also won Schuylkill County by a difference of 5,398 to 4,721.

Meanwhile, Quick defeated Wegman in the other six counties, including her home county of Lebanon, where she won 7,440 to 1,646. Carbon County Democrats favored Quick by a vote of 2,750 to 2,289, while her other wins were in Columbia, 3,019 to 1,431; Luzerne, 2,282 to 1,380; Montour, 1,018 to 458; and Northumberland, 1,480 to 667.

Both Wegman and Quick sought the Democratic nomination two years ago in the first race involving the realigned district, but the party’s nominee was Denny Wolff. He collected 11,020 votes in 2018 while Wegman was second with 8,450 and Quick trailed him by 834 votes with 7,616. Meuser won a three-person race that year also, defeating Schuylkill County Commissioner George Halcovage Jr. and business consultant Scott Uehlinger of Topton, Berks County. The congressman-elect that year won the GOP primary with 26,568 votes, followed by Halcovage with 12,032 and Uehlinger with 11,541.

In the general election, Meuser defeated Wolff by a vote of 148,723 to 100,204.

A dentist for 36 years, Wegman has served on the Reading Redevelopment Authority and as chairman of the city’s Parking Authority. Quick is a package car driver for the United Parcel Service and former public schools teacher.

Before being elected to Congress, Meuser was president of the Pride Mobility Corporation, a manufacturer of motorized wheelchairs in the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton area. He ran unsuccessfully for a seat in Pennsylvania’s 10th Congressional District in 2008, losing to Chris Hackett, who went on to lose to Democrat Chris Carney. Meuser later served in the cabinet of Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett as Secretary of Revenue.