In less than a week, Election 2025 will be over. In Pennsylvania, that means no more commercials with judges in them, very soon. The overwhelming bulk of the attention is on the Supreme Court retention race, and rightfully so. Justices Dougherty, Donohue, and Wecht have been fair, extremely fair, and have protected Pennsylvania from some of the ridiculous shit that has gone on across the country. Even when they threw out the partisanly gerrymandered Congressional map in 2018, they didn’t draw a left-wing utopia map to give Democrats a huge edge. They drew a 9-9 map and stated that Pennsylvanian’s have a right to fair districts. They gave every region that could support a Congressional district a district. They have kept our state from becoming a partisan Petri dish. These judges are protecting the law and deserve a second ten year term.

Make sure you go to the end of the ballot, whether you vote on Election Day or by mail, and check yes for Justices Kevin Dougherty, Christine Dougherty, and David Wecht.

Don’t stop there though. Superior Court Justice Alice Beck Dubow and Commonwealth Court Judge Michael Wojcik are also up for retention. Beck Dubow serves on a narrowly divided court partisanly, and yet has spent the last decade being a fair and impartial judge on one of the busiest courts in the country. The Superior Court is the last court that has to consider your appeal, and they need her for another ten years. Judge Wojcik is on a rather conservative court, but finds common ground with his colleagues every day to uphold the law on matters of policy and government. Go to the end of the ballot, after the Supreme Court Judges, and vote YES for these two as well.

No, you’re not done voting to retain Judges. In Northampton County, Judges Paula Roscioli and Sam Murray have to run for retention. These two judges sit on the bench every day in Easton and hear literally every kind of case- from armed robbery to a custody battle, a civil lawsuit to a PFA. If you’re saying to yourself that you don’t hear much about them, like you forgot them over the last ten years, THAT IS A GOOD THING. Common Pleas Judges don’t belong on the news, because that usually means they did something wrong. These people are literally not allowed to be political at all. They are supposed to just do their job. They have, for ten years. That’s why you don’t hear much about them. That’s why you need to go to the very end of the ballot and vote YES to retain them for another ten years.

Judges are critically important in our society, but they are not the only things that matter in this election. Here in Northampton County, you have three separate races you need to vote for. One is a County Executive, which will change for the first time in eight years this coming January. The County Executive runs the county on a day to day basis. Some things the Executive oversees are the Gracedale county senior citizens home, the department of children and youth, preserving open farmland space, a courts system, the public defenders office, replacing and repairing some bridges, and a whole host of other very basic, day to day functions of our society. You don’t want to put Tom Giovanni or his puppet masters in charge of this government. You do want to put County Controller Tara Zrinski in charge. With the County feeling the crunch of less or no money coming from the Federal and State Governments, you need someone like Zrinski, with a deep knowledge of the county’s finances and the right values to protect our elderly, our sick, children in broken families, and our environment amidst fiscal uncertainty. The next Executive will face some very difficult decisions leading the county forward, and will very likely have to raise taxes to execute functions that have been mandated on them by Washington and Harrisburg. You need someone who will protect the taxpayers and those most in need, as much as you can possibly do so.

The race for the vacant seat on the Court of Common Pleas between Jeremy Clark and James Fuller offers less stark of a contrast. For one thing, Judges can’t say how they will rule on a case, so when running for a new seat, you have to guess. Jeremy Clark is a really solid guy, he’s experienced, smart, and has served his country before as a member of the armed forces. Fuller and I went to school together, and he was always a quiet guy, which is a great character trait in a judge, and his legal work absolutely qualifies him to be a judge. Knowing both, I won’t say anything negative about them. I’m going to vote for Clark, because he shares the values that I do, but there’s no monster in this race.

There are ten seats candidates (five seats), all at-large, up for grabs on the Northampton County Council, and honestly this race depresses me. I am definitely not voting for all five Democrats on the ballot. In fact, I’ll be honest, removing partisanship, the Republicans ran a better, more accomplished ticket. Right now, I’m only going to endorse you voting for Jason Boulette and I guess, Dave Holland, who I didn’t vote for in the primary, but seems perfectly fine, I guess. I voted for Lori Vargo Heffner in each of her past elections, and might even again, but some of her decisions this term were deeply disappointing, particularly when she voted with the Republican minority to give a warehouse in the Slate Belt a tax break, when she voted against her fellow General Purposes Authority board member Paul Anthony to be on the Council, and her vote against a county health center. She decided in this term to be a “check” on the County Executive, which would be fine if he were doing things the public opposed or that contradicted his past statements, but that was not the case. He ran on protecting Gracedale, preserving open farmland, and not raising taxes, which is what he did. There was no need for a “check” on what 56% of the county voted for. Lori is a wonderful human being and she is absolutely smart and qualified to serve on the council. I’m not going to tell you to vote for her or not though, because she did some things I frankly don’t support. She is absolutely one of the five best people on the ballot, but I’m troubled here.

I will not be voting for Theresa Fadem or Nadeem Quyuum. I don’t know Fadem at all, and all I have seen of her campaign consisted of her talking about things the county council has no say over, like affordable housing. The last thing the council needs is another activist who doesn’t really know what county government does, but wants to be heard. Nadeem ran his race for Controller two years ago talking about affordable housing too, and he and his wife waged an ugly campaign against State Rep. Bob Freeman, focusing on “genocide” in Gaza, something Freeman neither supports or has anything to do with. Sorry, I can’t sign for that. Fortunately, these two are barely actively campaigning, and hopefully they will not win. There are some decent people running on the Republican side, but none of them would benefit from my endorsing them, as their voters probably mostly perceive that they disagree with my political positions (I doubt they do as much as they think). At least three of their candidates have family members that are good friends of mine. I just don’t think it would be helpful for me to say anything nice about them, even as people, in this political environment. Unfortunately there are people in their own party who would make that a negative for them. Also, at the end of the day, I’m reluctant to publicly endorse a candidate who I’m probably going to disagree with 60% of the time or more on council, as I won’t want to defend that later. Do I really want this person on council, or do I just think they’re a better, more qualified human than some folks on my side? Right now, I will tell you that I probably leave at least one space blank in this race, if not three.

Here in Palmer Township, we have a few local elections. Brian Snyder is unopposed in his school board race, so all I’m going to tell you here is he’s not this guy. Baron Vanderburg is unopposed to replace Zeke Bellis for the next four years as township Supervisor, so I could say nothing here, but I will just go ahead and tell you that Baron is one of the smartest, most dedicated, and hard working people in local government that I know, and I hope you enthusiastically vote for him. I used to serve on the Board of Auditors with Stephen Colbeth, and he’s unopposed, but vote for him anyway. Doreen Umholtz has been Tax Collector forever, and she’s unopposed to stay there, which is good. There are two contested Supervisor seats on the ballot in the township. First, I’m going to tell you to vote for Tung-To Lam, he’s a hard working young guy that knows township government already and has run an active campaign. Then I’m going to tell you that I don’t know any of the other three very well. From everything I’ve been told by current members of the board, Marcella Cardone will probably be the most productive and “no harm” of the three, so vote for her.

That’s my ballot. If you really want to dig further, and you have my phone number, you can call me to ask.