Posts Tagged → commonwealth
Anatomy of a primary election
On May 20th, Pennsylvania held its primary election. Mostly local seats and judgeships were on the ballot, which are definitely important, but the real prizes were the PA Commonwealth Court and the PA Superior Court. As has come to be usual here and in many other states, the conservative/ independent-minded grass roots fielded their candidates and the state Republican Party fielded its candidates.
And as usual, the PA Republican Party was directly involved in the selection of the primary election candidates, their endorsements, their negative attacks, funding, etc. When a political party gets in between The People and their choice of candidate, the party always loses in the long run. When The People believe the party does not share their views or values, and is only pursuing the selection of certain candidates who will be malleable and loyal to the party, then The People lose faith in the party.
Here in PA there is real animosity between grass roots conservatives and the PA GOP establishment.
This election we had grass roots candidate Maria Battista vs. PAGOP candidate political establishment-endorsed Ann Marie Wheatcraft for Superior Court judge. Battista had run before as the GOP endorsed candidate, and had lost to the grass roots candidate. This time around, for whatever reason, she was on the outs with the PAGOP and on the in with the grass roots groups, like Lycoming Patriots. Wheatcraft had the PAGOP endorsement and money.
For the Commonwealth Court we had well known Second Amendment attorney Josh Prince vs. unknown state bureaucrat attorney Matt Wolford. Bureaucrat Wolford was mysteriously endorsed by the PAGOP, even though he has worked most of his career at the PA Dept. of Environmental Protection, an agency that no matter which incarnation it embodies, and regardless of which political party is running it, nonetheless is associated with heavy-handed regulations and lawless bureaucrats who routinely beat up on private landowners and businesses. Not exactly a likely place to give birth to a solid Republican candidate for any office, much less a judgeship.
The long and short of these two races is that Battista the outsider defeated Wheatcraft the moneyed insider, and Wolford the party endorsed yet unknown bureaucrat and mystery “Republican” defeated grass roots favorite Prince. Moreover, Prince was endorsed by numerous organizations, like Gun Owners of America, Firearms Owners Against Crime, etc.
These are strange results.
Normally voters align with outsiders or insiders, but not with one candidate here and not that one over there. And yet that is what happened in this election. Normally, big endorsements gain big traction for candidates, but we saw no evidence of that in the Prince vs Wolford race. Despite his many big endorsements, Prince was utterly crushed even in very conservative rural counties, like Lycoming and Elk, where he was known, liked, and should have won handily. And yet, in these same counties, Battista blew off Wheatcraft’s doors.
Aside from a crooked vote tallying scheme, I have no explanation for this odd outcome that defies all odds and conventional thinking. Except for one possible variable that tends to get overlooked these days, and that is ballot position. That is, where does the candidate’s name fall on the ballot – top, middle, or last.
Studies have shown that ballot position does matter, or it can matter, but much less so when voters feel compelled to look up candidates on the internet. With its easy information access, the internet has been the great leveler of campaigns everywhere. Big campaign money cannot always defend a candidate’s bad record, which will be all over the internet, visible to the voters who but follow a few clicks on a search engine.
Battista had top and Prince had bottom on their respective ballots. Meaning that the 3/4-4/4 super voters who make up the primary election electorate, were unsure of who to vote for and simply and superficially chose the first name they saw for each position. That could explain the opposite results we got for both candidates, Battista and Prince.
As we see here, the voters have to want to know something about the people they are voting for in order to defeat the ballot position factor, as well as overcome often superficial campaign advertising. And so we learned a hard lesson here: The vaunted and lauded super voters did not necessarily do super research into the candidates. They apparently did not bother to look up the candidates before walking into the voting booth. They simply saw a name at the top and made their choice.
And that is the gory anatomy of Pennsylvania’s 2025 primary election, God help us all.
Does ballot position really determine who a lot of primary election super voters choose? From this election, it would seem so.
Elk County is a very conservative rural place where DEP bureaucrats are hated like poison ivy. The 2025 results there make no sense, unless ballot position is the primary factor.
Doesn’t it seem mean spirited to not even mention candidate Josh Prince? Doesn’t it further alienate his supporters? What is that all about?
I have never seen election results like this. If conservative rural Lycoming County super voters feel so strongly about conservative candidate Battista, they for sure would have felt just as strongly about conservative candidate Prince. And yet…the results seem to prove that ballot position is the most important determinant
Dauphin County
Dauphin County
Upcoming Primary Election recommendations
Pennsylvania’s primary election (Democrat vs. Democrat, Republican vs. Republican, and sadly, no one else vs. anyone else i.e. fewer choices for voters) is coming up in a few weeks. On May 20th, Pennsylvania voters should all be going to vote for candidates they believe will best represent their interests in our self-run government.
Through voting, We, The People, select our fellow citizens to represent us, to be a voice for us, to make sound choices for us, in the giant government blob. Why more Pennsylvanians do not vote, why so many fail to vote, eludes me. Nothing is more important than casting your vote, and yet, historically, few people vote overall, and especially in primaries. Voting is not difficult. It does not take money, or good looks, or nice clothes, or a lot of time, or a fancy car. You, the voter, simply have to make it a 15-30 minute priority on one day in the Spring, and then again one day in the Fall. You go to your voting precinct and vote for those candidates who best represent your views, religion, ideology, whatever. Many elections are really close, and every vote counts. Your vote counts, so do it.
In the state-wide Republican primary races, Ann Marie Wheatcraft is the superior candidate for Judge of the Superior Court. Judge Wheatcraft is hard on criminals and supportive of crime victims, which is how good judges should be and how they used to act. Now, it seems popular for judges to themselves break the law and to also throw Americans aside in favor of hardened criminals. As if the hardened criminals are somehow victims who need the judge’s protection. That appears to be the upside down mindest of Maria Battista, Wheatcraft’s opponent. No thanks. America has had quite enough of this nonsense.
Vote for Ann Marie Wheatcraft for Superior Court.
Joshua Prince is the by far and away best possible candidate for Judge of the Commonwealth Court. Josh has distinguished himself for decades as a court room force for good and for sticking up for the little guy against government over-reach. I know from personal experience, as Josh Prince has represented me personally, and a group I am a member of (FOAC), in a Harrisburg 2A lawsuit we simply had to bring (and which we won). Josh’s demeanor in the court room is impressive, steady, clear, and really organized. I have seen him run rings around attorneys touted as the best of their kind.
I have nothing personal against candidate Matt Wolford, but like so many grass roots voters, I am frustrated by the behind-closed-doors process that got Matt Wolford into his candidacy. Matt Wolford is a product of the Republican Establishment, which across America, and especially in Pennsylvania, is one of the biggest failures of any sort of organization. This is a cookie cutter group that time and time again loses easy races and then says “Aww shucks, we’ll get ’em next time,” even though there is no next time. With the Democrat Party aggressively gerrymandering the voting map, and engaging in motor-voter registration of illegal aliens and last minute changes to voting laws, honest elections look like a thing of the distant imagination. So campaigns must be hard-fought, which is not the PAGOP’s forte.
Of all the GOP groups across America, the PAGOP is especially mostly run by election consultants, who get paid well, whether they win or lose. Pennsylvania GOP politics is all about getting political management and consulting contracts, which has yielded a bitchy and mean-spirited entitlement attitude among the consultant class. They like candidates who will bend the knee and give them consulting contracts when they win. They do not care about policy or philosophy of government; every vote to them is a question of horse trading for money.
While I am on this bitchfest, let us point out that Dauphin County was one of the few PA counties to LOSE Republican voters in 2024. While the rest of PA was moving right with increased Republican voter registrations and votes, Dauphin County regressed. And Dauphin County has been regressing for years. It is probably due to the fact that the Dauphin County GOP chairman spends all of his time on…. high paying political consulting contracts, instead of focusing on winning elections.
To me, politics should not be about making money. But then, I never won any of my election races, which were run strictly on policy. Perhaps if more people like me and Josh Prince did get elected, America would be in better shape.
Anyhow, Matt Wolford comes out of this failed insular, unprincipled, and artificial process, which always seems to yield the most tepid, boring, unimpressive candidates who then go on to lose to aggressive Democrats. Let’s not do that again.
Vote for Josh Prince for Judge of the Commonwealth Court.
Here in the county court system, we have the Court of Common Pleas, where the most basic cases are heard. This is where you, the voter, want a most stable and normal person sitting up there on the bench, judging you. Two great candidates for this role deserve your vote: Fran Chardo and Jim Zugay.
Fran is the current District Attorney of Dauphin County. A more stand-up, normal, clean hands guy you will not find in American politics, anywhere. Fran is even keeled, does everything by the book, is a great listener, and will be exactly the kind of fair-minded judge you want looking back at you when you get carted into court for making some first-time-ever stupid decision that you regretted the moment you did it. Good guy.
Vote for Fran Chardo for Court of Common Pleas.
The other candidate for the Court of Common Pleas who deserves your vote is Jim Zugay, a long-time Dauphin County steadfast functionary and do-er git-er-done kind of guy. Jim has been (I think) Dauphin County Recorder of Deeds, among several other important county roles. And let me tell you straight up: Jim Zugay does not like me, because I am a pain in the butt. Jim is a serious, level headed, by-the-books guy, and he does not like bitchfesty people like me asking annoying questions that are not about getting the job done right now. I admire Jim for that, even though he grimaces when we encounter one another at social events.
Vote for Jim Zugay for Court of Common Pleas.
No, please do not vote for Katy Kennedy-McShane for this judge role. Yes, Katy and her husband are boxers, which is cool, and yes, they work with disadvantaged minority kids, which is very very cool and meritorious. But Katy’s ideological/ philosophical perspective on legal outcomes is not Constitutionalist. Rather, Katy will be a judicial activist, trying to make herself into judge, jury and executioner, or rather judge, legislator, and chief executive, all in one. This failed approach to judicial review has created so many problems by now that America is having a tough time sorting them out. Our constitutional rights cannot withstand this ongoing leftwing assault.
America and Dauphin County need judges who rely on precedent and the Constitution to make narrowly applied decisions. That’s Chardo and Zugay. America cannot take another activist judge, and Katy Kennedy-McShane will be an activist judge. No, no, no.
Finally, Graham Hetrick is the handsomest, most debonair coroner in American history. Few men who carry a gun and badge are better looking or better dressed or nicer or smarter than Graham. For some reason, a lot of coroners are colorful characters, and Graham is the most colorful of them all, while also maintaining stellar standards. The guy had his own national TV show, and smitten lady friends from lives past in distant states would call me out of the blue to ask “Do you know Graham Hetrick? OMIGOD can you get me his autograph, Josh, dear?”
Graham probably has this same electrifying effect on the dead, too, as well as justice for the dead. Vote for him. Dauphin County needs his steady hand in crime solving.
Patriot News Editorial on Mindlin’s Toss from Ballot
“Infrequently” best describes how often an editorial by the local newspaper, The Patriot News, would appeal to me on logic, principle, or understanding of the facts. However, independent candidate Nevin Mindlin’s political assassination by both Democrats and Republicans is so notoriously egregious that the Patriot News stated the case pretty well, so here it is:
Commonwealth Court sides with mystery challengers to Mindlin’s candidacy: Editorial
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Patriot-News Editorial Board By Patriot-News Editorial Board
on October 07, 2013 at 10:59 AM, updated October 07, 2013 at 12:09 PM
Nevin Mindlin, the one-time independent candidate for Harrisburg mayor, is a candidate no more. He has been knocked off the November ballot by court rulings based on the mindlessly literal application of a nonsensical state law. With little time for an appeal to the state Supreme Court, he has decided against waging a write-in campaign.
Nevin Mindlin went to Commonwealth Court in September, seeking to get back on November’s mayoral ballot. Friday, the court turned him down.
Though Mindlin was an independent candidate, not affiliated with any party or organization, state law requires him to name a committee that would replace him should he leave the race. That requirement makes sense for a political party, but it makes no sense for an independent candidate. By definition, an independent candidate is independent of organizational structures that would be entitled to claim an independent’s slot on the ballot.
Knowing all that, Mindlin did not name that committee. The Dauphin County elections office accepted his petition, without any warning that his petition had any fatal defect.
None of that mattered to the lower court that knocked him off the ballot earlier this summer. And it didn’t matter to Commonwealth Court, which last Friday upheld the dubious ruling.
Commonwealth Court used a legal technicality to dodge the heart of Mindlin’s case. He said that the state law in question violates a right enshrined in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution — freedom of association. In this case, the law forces Mindlin to associate with a “committee” empowered to choose some undetermined future candidate who could replace him, when the whole point of his candidacy is that he is independent of backroom-type arrangements like that.
Mindlin’s case is an example of the sleazy, insider political game-playing that fuels public disillusionment with elected officials and government.
The court’s hostility to Mindlin’s arguments also contradicts a well-established principle set by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in election cases. Courts in the commonwealth, when applying the election code, are supposed to construe the requirements liberally, “so as not to deprive an individual of his right to run for office, or voters of their right to elect a candidate of their choice.”
Again, the Commonwealth Court used a technicality to completely ignore those claims under the state Constitution.
Mindlin’s campaign is the latest casualty of ballot bounty hunters, ordinary citizens who mysteriously come forward, armed with expensive lawyers, to press a legal challenge to a candidate’s filing papers.
Hired guns parse signatures for the slimmest possible rationale to disqualify them: using a first initial instead of full name, women whose maiden name and married name are different, imperfect handwriting, stray marks in the signature block.
Even if the candidate survives the challenge, (as third-party Allegheny County council candidate Jim Barr did earlier this summer), he or she has to expend precious time and money fighting in court.
These often-shadowy court challenges to candidates’ paperwork have a corrosive effect on public confidence in the integrity of the election system.
In a comment on PennLive, one reader said Mindlin “must have stepped on the wrong toes.” Another announced, “I won’t be voting for anybody; the best candidate just got bounced.”
Many have wondered who paid the legal bills for challenging Mindlin. But without any public disclosure requirements, the mystery money can remain secret.
All in all, Mindlin’s case is an example of the sleazy, insider political game-playing that fuels public disillusionment with elected officials and government.
Pennsylvania’s legislature could rewrite election law to strike the nonsensical provision that kept Mindlin off the ballot. The legislature could require those filing challenges against candidates to identify how they are paying for all that expensive legal work. The Legislature could lower the unreasonably high barriers now imposed on third parties seeking to get on the state’s ballot.
But as with so many dysfunctional aspects of Pennsylvania’s laws affecting politicians, those who get to make the rules are content with the status quo. After all, they got there by playing by the rules as they are – why would legislators want to change them?
From their selfish perspective, it makes political sense. But from the perspective of the citizen whom elected officials are supposed to serve, allowing ballot bounty hunters so much room to squelch candidates is nonsense.
(from http://www.pennlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2013/10/mindlin_off_ballot_commonwealth_court_bad_ruling.html#comments)