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Posts Tagged → 28th

Relishing the win over GOP machine politics

Four years ago, I ran in the US Congressional Republican primary for the Congressional seat held by then congressman Tim Holden. It was a four-way race, between me, state senator Dave Argall, Frank Ryan, and Baptist Pastor Bob Griffiths.  From the get-go, different Republican leaders tried to get me to bow out.  Dave himself met with me at GOP headquarters and asked me to step out (Ah, the irony…I had asked him to chair my campaign).  Lots of heartache along the campaign trail as GOP insiders tried again and again to give Dave an artificial boost, an unfair advantage, and unequal opportunity.  Lebanon County GOP tried to endorse him, and the committee disintegrated as a result of the infighting that ensued.  Schuylkill County GOP did endorse him, and immediately afterwards lost its chairman and underwent radical changes.

It was a great race, we did very well (26% overall in a four-way race, with about $20,000 spent, and the highlight being the 51% we got in rural Perry County, which has my kind of people), and we got kudos all around for the excellent pick-up campaign we ran.  Dave went on to win that primary by a few hundred votes, and then he got crushed by Tim Holden.  All of the smart GOP consultants and insiders who told me that Dave would win, and that I should get out, well, they never called me to acknowledge they were wrong.  Apparently losing races is OK so long as it is a GOP insider, but the consultancy insider class is terribly afraid of grass roots candidates losing.

In 2012, I ran in the GOP primary for the PA 15th state senate district, but only after I had  cleared a bunch of artificial hurdles the GOP set up to keep me out of that race.  First, the new district was not released until very late in 2011, and only then after former state senator Jeff Piccola had retired one week into the one-year residency requirement period (imagine that!), so that I could not get an apartment over the new district line just a mile from my house and thereby qualify as a resident of the district.

In January 2012, the PA state supreme court threw out the GOP redistricting plan, calling it unconstitutional and deeply flawed, and I found myself back in the old district.  But even then, we were several days into the ballot petition process, with no volunteers, no committee, no paperwork, no money, up against two establishment candidates, one of whom was hand picked by the party, John McNally, our Dauphin County GOP chairman.

We got 850 signatures, got on the ballot, and started campaigning, grass roots style.  Within weeks, the GOP-controlled PA senate had developed a new redistricting map and presented it to the court.  Not surprisingly, I was once again outside the senate district.  Making things worse, the GOP establishment staff began telling voters that I might win, but then be outside the district, and therefore unable to serve the people who had voted for me.  Thankfully, the PA supreme court rejected the map as just as flawed as the first one, and the GOP had to live with my candidacy, which proved to be incredibly popular.

In other words, I know exactly what senator-elect Scott Wagner went through until this week.

What was refreshing to me as I worked Wagner’s district’s largest poll (Manchester 5 & 7) was the voter sentiment that came pouring out as they poured in to the polling place to write in Wagner’s name on the ballot.  Voters were vociferously rejecting the contrived hurdles that the GOP had arranged to stop Wagner, they rejected the artificial support the GOP had thrown behind milquetoast career politician Ron Miller, and they strongly opposed the $700,000 in negative ads run against Wagner.  That was $700,000 that the GOP could have spent, should have spent, to beat liberalism.

I do intend to run for the 15th state senate district again in two years.  And I guess I will be facing a GOP hand-picked cookie cutter empty suit of a candidate, someone the party expects to be a rubber stamp, who will not pursue right-to-work legislation.  And folks, I intend to win this one.  Hope to see you there with me at the barricades.