Posts Tagged → 15th district
Interesting PA 15th district state senate race
Now that the Super Tuesday primary election is over, which Our Lord and Savior President Donald Trump completely dominated in a historic crushing nationwide landslide, Pennsylvania has only another six weeks of national irrelevance to go until our primary election on April 23rd. Which makes Pennsylvania less than unimportant in the grand scheme of national politics, but allows us to focus on some interesting local races.
The election race that grabs my interest the most is for the 15th state senate district here in central PA, centered on Harrisburg City. This is a senate district I ran in one-and-a-half times. First in 2012, which entailed a real head-butting with the GOPe, and in which I did well but did not win. The second time I ran was 2015-2016, and I was the first candidate out of the gate. Color me surprised when another candidate announced (John DiSanto), quite establishment with the charisma of an old shoe, and who was backed by the same acidly anti-establishment state senator I had worked hard to elect in York County (Scott Wagner).
Political races are often weird, and in Spring 2015 I was just getting with the weirdness of facing off against people whom I had worked hard to elect, and who had no explanation for why they were opposing me, when the race got more complicated.
Enter out of the clear blue yonder a very young and very ambitious guy (Andrew Lewis), just moved back to Pennsylvania and fresh from military intelligence work in Washington, DC (now that MAGA knows how corrupt and evil our own American intelligence establishment is, one must wonder if this connection will hurt Andrew Lewis in his future political ambitions). With no local work or volunteer history, other than his family lived in both Juniata and Perry counties, Andrew Lewis became the alternative conservative candidate to me. Good looking and bright, Andrew made a fine candidate. His presence in the race bit into my rural support, and the fact that he, too, was financially supported by Scott Wagner bit deeper into my feelings about Scott Wagner and the people working for and with him.
What the heck did Scott Wagner have against little old me?
My participation in the race came to an abrupt end in late November, 2015, as I stepped up onto a boulder high on a mountain while bear hunting, and awkwardly fell off. My left knee was the knee that had not been previously operated on, and I had babied it for thirty years. The two back-to-back surgeries required to fix its resulting bad tears in the cartilage and frayed ligaments meant I could barely walk. And if there was one advantage I had it was my good door-to-door effort that had paid off before.
Not being able to walk door to door, I had no way of really running a competitive three-way race, and so I bowed out in December. And never a sore loser, I endorsed the same monkey-wrenching Andrew Lewis as the superior of the two candidates.
John DiSanto won that springtime primary election and went on to defeat the incumbent Democrat in the Fall of 2016. After eight years of voting reliably Republican present, but with no distinguishing leadership on issues like election integrity or the state system of education, DiSanto is now giving way to the heavily gerrymandered new senate district.
Our new 15th district map was created by the PA Dems to favor forever incumbent PA House member Patty Kim, a terribly undistinguished, sleep-walking, cookie cutter Marxist Democrat who is tired of not having to run for re-election every two years and now desires to not have to run for re-election every four years.
So we know who the Democrat candidate will be: Patty Kim.
On the GOP side we have two candidates, and this is what I find so interesting about this race. One candidate is an outsider, a nice man named Ken Stambaugh.
Local politicos will recognize the Stambaugh name because so many people from this large and engaged family are involved in politics across three counties here. Having appreciated the opportunity to speak at length with Ken Stambaugh, and having read his near-daily campaign trail updates, I come away with the impression of a good guy with good intentions, and no policy experience or even a desire for good policy, and not a lot of charisma. That he was recruited by incumbent state senator John DiSanto for the Fall suicide run against Marxist Patty Kim seems doubly lost on Ken.
That Ken was endorsed by the Dauphin County GOP is not lost on me or other conservative grass roots activists who abhor party meddling in primary races. Candidates today who tout their party endorsement in a primary race have a tin ear, or just don’t care about the voters.
Sometimes not being “political” can work well to a person’s advantage, and in this case, I think Ken Stambaugh probably sleeps well each night not knowing what politicos know. Let’s keep this a secret, because Ken’s earnestness is refreshing. He means well, which is to his credit.
Out of the blue, longtime politico, former Dauphin County commissioner, and newly elected Dauphin County treasurer, Nick DiFrancesco, has also decided to run for this same state senate seat.
Two weeks ago, the Lower Paxton Township Republicans issued a statement, calling on Nick to drop out of the race.
“I told everyone Nick would not take the treasurer position seriously,” said one frustrated politico.
“You crazy man,” I wrote to Nick. After all, having worked so hard to re-ingratiate himself with the Dauphin County GOP and barely win the county treasurer seat last November, to now run against the party takes real Italian-style chutzpah. Or too much ambition. Or balls. Or leadership….
However Nick’s thumb-in-the-eye and kick-in-the-shins entry into this race is characterized, Nick is at the opposite end of the politico spectrum from nice guy candidate Ken Stambaugh.
Nick DiFrancesco is very experienced with running for office and all of the “retail politics” this includes, such as money grubbing and networking. He also has Dauphin County name recognition, which always goes a long way in a primary race. Nick may be as establishment as a Republican can get, but to run against the party establishment is about as anti-establishment as it gets. Intriguing!
Which raises the question of whether Nick DiFrancesco has a political suicide urge, is addicted to running for office, or does he think he can really win against Patty Kim? I think Nick believes he can win against Patty Kim in the Fall. He says so, and I believe him.
The entire 15th senate district R vs D race in the Fall comes down to the R candidate reaching deeply into the Harrisburg City black community, and getting their votes. Which with the right candidate can be done. After all, decades of Democrat Party rule has left Harrisburg City and its majority black citizens bankrupted and left behind. Like pretty much every other Democrat-run city in America, it should be noted.
American blacks are not stupid, they are incredibly loyal (why blacks identify with the party of Slavery, the Democrats, and not the party of Abolition, the Republicans is a case of effective marketing vs. no marketing at all). They are smart enough to begin asking what the hell have they been loyal to and loyal for. The American black community is beginning to wake up to the fact that white liberal Democrats like Patty Kim are the most racist people on Planet Earth, and that repeatedly voting for them and their guaranteed failure and intergenerational poverty is stupid. And no, I don’t think candidate Alvin Q. Taylor has what it takes to lead, sorry, buddy.
Nick DiFrancesco should play Malcolm X’s “Political Chump” speech all over Allison Hill and Uptown Harrisburg, and lead Dauphin County in a political revolution that all of America needs. If there is one candidate who can do this, who has the balls to try it, to show all the scared Whiteys huddled up in their country clubs that Black people are very engaging and very interested in what candidates have to say, it is Nick.
In this primary race, and in the Fall race, I think Nick DiFrancesco has all of the advantages.
Property Taxes: Vote them OUT
A version of this opinion-editorial was submitted to the Patriot News editorial editor, John Micek. He usually prints my opinion pieces, but it also takes a lot of hemming and hawing. UPDATE: The Patriot News did run this op-ed on 11/2/16. Thank you, John Micek.
Property Taxes Must End
In graduate school, our economics professors gave us hypothetical tax and income scenarios to solve. Our homework was to critique various tax and revenue structures, and find the optimum public fund distributions, based on subjective values. These learning exercises were designed to give us the ability to present decision makers with a range of policy options best suited to a particular culture or economic perspective. A lot of my peers there were international students headed home to basically run their countries.
My take on property tax is that it spreads the burden around to those least likely to directly benefit from it, those least likely to see an indirect benefit from it, and those least likely to afford it. It penalizes working people the most. Politically it is treated like an off-the-books cash cow, pushing an increasingly unmanageable burden on our most vulnerable citizens. School property taxes are the worst and most unfair form of tax possible. A thousand years ago in Europe they were considered fair, because the taxing authorities no longer had to search and pillage individual farms while looking for “extra” grain and meat hidden among the farmer’s possessions. Land taxes were then tied to the particular land’s productive capabilities. Thin soils on rocky terrain in cold climates with short growing seasons were “penny lands,” because they annually produced only pennies worth of food and fiber beyond basic subsistence levels. “Ouncelands” farms on rich soils in warmer climates produced enough “extra” food to be annually valued in ounces of silver. And so on.
Today even this basic leveling philosophy is long gone from our property tax arrangements, as is the agricultural world that started property taxes altogether. Now it’s a free for all, with school property taxes disconnected from serving students, and directed to gold plating the various administrative and pension arrangements concocted by politically powerful unions, or building unneeded, expensive monuments to the failed educational profession in the form of elementary and high school “campuses” on productive farmland. Thus, the poorest cities with the lowest real estate values have the highest school taxes. This is bad policy, bad government, bad taxation, and it must end. We citizens deserve much better from our government.
Here in Pennsylvania’s 15th senate district, one candidate (the incumbent) has voted several times against repealing, changing, eliminating, or even reforming school property taxes. Then again, he has received tens of thousands of dollars from government school unions.
The other candidate has pledged to support Act 76, the property tax elimination bill that would keep Grandma from getting ejected from her home of fifty years because she can’t pay $23.76 in back taxes to a school district that only knows how to spend, spend, spend, and to which she has not sent a kid since 1963.
If you live here in the 15th senate district, next week you should vote for the candidate who says he supports Act 76. That person is John DiSanto.
Josh First is a businessman living in Harrisburg City.