I try to let the early results guide me when I do these rankings. We’re seven weeks in, can the top four teams be flukes? No, but if you put a gun to my head I’d say Philadelphia, Buffalo, Kansas City, the Rams, and Detroit are better. I’m not sure how San Francisco keeps winning games with their injured list, but they do. Now, does me saying I think the best teams aren’t the top teams yet mean that I don’t believe in my current top teams? No, there are good things happening with those teams. I’m just not ready to say that Bo Nix and Drake Maye are him yet. I’m sorry, I’m not sold that a Packers defense that gave up 40 to Dallas (basically double what Philly did without Carter) can win a title with Jordan Love having to outshoot that. I’m also not writing off Tampa just because they lost, but the injuries they suffered make me wonder. There’s a lot of things that don’t quite seem right yet here, but seven games is a decent sample size now. Frankly, some teams move up simply by not playing, because they don’t lose, and other teams get the benefit of the doubt because they made changes at QB or coach, and I at least believe some of what I’m seeing. We’re not yet at the point where some teams play out the string. In a few weeks we will be. I also think that as we see how the different division races are shaking out, we’ll see some teams who don’t have incredible records (think Cincinnati, if Flacco has a few more games like Thursday in him) rise up simply because they have a chance. For now though, this is where we are.
It wasn’t that long ago that Lehigh County was considered the more “red” county in the Lehigh Valley. It gave us a fairly consistent line of powerful Republicans at the federal and state level, such as Pat Toomey, Charlie Dent, and Pat Browne- or more succinctly, not MAGA. The GOP hasn’t won the County Executive’s post since 2005 (or right after George W. Bush was re-elected. The once Republican suburbs became the key for Susan Wild’s six year run. Nick Miller and Lisa Boscola represent the county in two of the state senate seats. The Republican Party is virtually obsolete in Allentown and Bethlehem, something that wasn’t true when I was growing up. In short, they’re not good at this.
It almost wasn’t that way in 2021. Phil Armstrong had a difficult re-election campaign. In 2017, he won by about 5% over a well funded and fairly normal Brad Osborne with 25,085 votes. In 2021, turnout went considerably up in the county by comparison (vote by mail) to 74,108 votes cast. Maria McLaughlin carried the county for Supreme Court with 37,002 votes and Lori Dumas carried it for Commonwealth Court with 34,303 votes. Timika Lane got more votes than Dumas (34,719) lost the county to Megan Sullivan (who actually got the most votes of all judicial candidates), and Democrats lost two of the three Court of Common Pleas seats (Tom Caffrey, Tom Capehart), with Zac Cohen carrying the third seat by 5 votes over David Ritter (trust me, I remember it well). As for Armstrong, well, he actually conceded defeat at one point in the night, which is only funny because he actually thought he was going to need to in 2017 and I kept telling him he was fine. Armstrong got 51.8% (36,873) to Glenn Eckhart’s 48.1% (34,255), a fairly close race for running against a guy who lost his seat as Controller. Republicans actually won 3 of the 5 commissioner districts as well, marking what was probably their best year in the county in years.
In 2023, the Democrats beat the brakes off of the Republicans in Lehigh County. Dan McCaffrey won the county by over 14% with 42,333 votes (57.03%). Jill Beck and Timika Lane carried the Superior Court race in the county comfortably, and Maria Battista is running again. Matt Wolf won the Commonwealth Court race by just under 8,000 votes, a blowout (55.2% to 44.6%). Democrats won all four Commissioner seats, and by a lot, with Jon Irons getting fourth and still beating the top Republican candidate by over 3,000 votes. The only contested row office race was Coroner, and Dan Buglio won by over 13%. It was, to be blunt, an ass kicking.
So what was the difference? In 2021, turnout was 74,108, or 30.9% of voters. In 2023, turnout was 75,127, or 31.1%. Yes, that’s slightly more, but it is not the kind of jump that should explain that kind of flip. Taking a good look at the current numbers for 2025, Lehigh County has 76,320 likely voters (voters in 2 of the last 4 county elections plus voters who have been mailed a ballot). Democrats hold a pretty substantial advantage in registration among these voters, with 37,661 to 31,823 for the Republicans, and another 6,836 who either independent, Green, or Libertarian. Republicans would need to win nearly all of the independent voters (literally over 90%) or cut into the Democrats ranks to win the race. On paper, Roger Maclean might not be an awful candidate to try that. He’s raised a paltry sum of money compared to Josh Siegel though, who is skillfully pointing out that Maclean isn’t up to the job. Also, his party is trying to use Charlie Kirk to inspire turnout. That’s not going to win over non-Republican voters to their cause.
It’s important to start out understanding Lehigh County this way- it’s similar to Northampton County, but the GOP has not won an Executive race there in two decades, they haven’t carried the county for President at all in that time period, they haven’t won the county for the Congressional candidate on their ticket since Charlie Dent left, and I guess basically I’m telling you that even their good years, they are not likely to win. The big reason is still Allentown, but they have steadily made gains in Allentown during the Trump era for President, and that still hasn’t changed the results because they’re losing voters in the suburbs, particularly the highest educated neighborhoods. But why did they get close in 2021? What was the difference? The answer can be found in voters who voted in 2021, but not in 2023 and have not yet received a ballot. The Republicans hold a roughly 2,600 voter advantage among these people. This Republican leaning group of voters came out and made it close in 2021, but they didn’t show up at all in 2023.
If turnout is somewhere between 2021’s and the 76,320 likely voters I have currently in the screen, there’s not much chance Maclean does all that well against Siegel. His whole campaign so far is “that liberal kid grew up in New Jersey!” and the days of that kind of crap exciting people are long over. Much like in Northampton County, the GOP’s best chance of changing their recent luck begins when *more* voters show up than are expected. In both counties, 2021 voters who didn’t vote in 2023 and haven’t requested a ballot have to come out for them, and maybe even some mid-term voters from their party too. Much like in Northampton County, I don’t think they have the guy to do it. The one caveat I will say here though is that this is basically an analysis of the Executive race, as Lehigh has a recent history of voting very different in their Court of Common Pleas races. Mulqueen may pull out a win without the electorate moving at all, and almost certainly will if turnout goes high.
You know, if I waited a day, I’d only have to really rank two teams. Instead, I know who #4-30 are going to be, and their order is pretty much preordained. After Game 7 of the ALCS is done, #3 will be locked in for the year. We’ve almost reached the end of the weekly, in-season rankings. These should be no surprise. One team has won the pennant, and they are #1. Two teams are alive, they’re #’s 2 and 3. From there, it’s all locked.
I got a text last night- “Josh IS endorsing Crooksy!!! Unbelievable.”
I won’t reveal the source of the text, but I guess if that’s the street word, it’s only like the twelfth time it’s been out there. If Crooksy thinks he has the Governor’s endorsement, by the 37th time or so he believes it, it has to be true.
If this is who the Governor wants, that’s nice, he won’t have a vote. My sense is he won’t spend on the guy’s behalf either, so who cares? We will see what the voters think of Crooksy’s record of backstabbing his way to the top of his union and deceiving his own family.
In 2021, 71,335 people voted. Maria McLaughlin narrowly carried the county for Supreme Court with just below 50% of the vote. She was the only judicial Democrat to do that well in the county. Lamont McClure was about 2,700 votes over 50% in the County Executive’s race, beating Steve Lynch by 12%. Democrats took the top three spots out of the five County Council seats.
In 2023, 72,436 people voted. Dan McCaffery won the county by 14% for Supreme Court, hitting 57%. Jill Beck, Timika Lane, and Matt Wolf all won the county in statewide judicial races. Brian Panella won a seat on Common Pleas by 8%. Tara Zrinski beat John Cusick by 8% for Controller. Democrats won the only two contested County Council seats fairly easily.
Recent history has been good to Democrats. They have not lost an Executive, Controller, District Attorney, or Court of Common Pleas race in the county since 2013. Likely Turnout numbers say that trend has a decent chance to continue. Likely voters (voters who voted in 2 of the last 4 county elections) plus people who have been mailed a vote-by-mail ballot favor Democrats by a 36,405 to 30,037 margin. There are 7,385 independents, 225 Libertarians, and 40 Greens who also meet this criteria. The total number of voters expected under this screen are 74,092. At this turnout, it’s very likely Tara Zrinski will be the next Executive and Jeremy Clark will win the seat on the Court of Common Pleas. I’d also expect “yes” for the sitting Supreme Court Justices to carry the county.
There are ways for things to still swing the other way though. First off, turnout could simply fall short of expectations. A turnout similar to 2021 would likely be more competitive, as McClure outperformed the ticket as a whole that year by over 4,500 votes. Even then though, you have to remember that Zrinski was the top vote getter for Council, and she could still win. The second possibility for the GOP is that they win independents by a crushing margin- but they would need north of 70% of independents to make that happen. The third possibility is that the Republicans pull over a sizable chunk of Democrats. In reality, the GOP needs a little bit of all three, or a massive surge of federal election year Republican voters to show up, for which there is no sign of it happening right now.
I think the one certainty for me is that the strategy of the Northampton County GOP is not conducive to them pulling this off. Mailing about Charlie Kirk and being adversarial about vote-by-mail and early voting is not going to make them appeal to more moderate voters. So while they do have a chance, and there are factors beyond what the parties do (Is the Northampton Democratic Party doing anything?), right now Northampton County Republicans are probably swimming a bit uphill. Things aren’t trending well for them either. A few weeks ago they had opportunities to close in. Now they actually trail in non-2023 voters who are requesting ballots by 7,336 to 6,765. In other words, the unlikely voters becoming likely because they requested a ballot are moving towards the Democrats fairly quickly. If that holds, the outcome seems strongly likely to be obvious.
Sure, maybe the Yankees have been out for over a week, but at least they were in the postseason. Juan Soto would have been in the same spot he’s in now if he had never left Washington, D.C., and he’d have at least had a postseason for the Yankees or Padres. Hey, he wanted to win with the Mets. Great for him.
Coaches being paid out millions to get lost, conference re-alignment that makes no sense, and games on the schedule that shouldn’t be played. This is the reality of NCAA Football in 2025. There are a lot of things that make no sense. When is the portal actually opened or closed? How many teams should be in the playoffs? Why are we still playing bowls?
It’s madness.
I’ve thought about it a bit this season, and begun to come up with how I want it to look- which won’t be how it goes. Even so, we have to start making some level of sense of the game again. What does winning your conference mean? What makes a team a playoff team? Can there be fairness with independent teams? Why did we kill geography? All of these can be answered. And fairly.
So let’s start at the important thing- the conferences. Realignment is basically rendering all conferences but two as irrelevant. If that’s the case, maybe we need a third D-1 to go with FBS and FCS. I don’t think we should go there. I would create six conferences of 20 teams- the Big 20, SEC, Atlantic 20, Big West, PAC 20, and American 20-, one conference of 16 (MAC), and Notre Dame can stay independent how they want. Here’s how I’d break them out-
Big 20– Penn State, Ohio State, Michigan, Michigan State, Indiana, Purdue, Northwestern, Illinois, Mizzou, Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado, Utah, Washington, Oregon, UCLA, and USC. They get their national conference. They shed a couple of schools who are better off elsewhere. Everyone can be happy and regionalism can die a slow death.
SEC– Virginia, North Carolina, Duke, Kentucky, Tennessee, Vanderbilt, South Carolina, Clemson, Georgia, Florida State, Florida, Alabama, Auburn, Ole Miss, Mississippi State, LSU, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, and Texas A&M. And here is the most regional conference literally ever. They get to go all the way up to Virginia and bring in the whole old confederacy, plus. Who says no?
Atlantic 20– UMASS, Boston College, UCONN, Army, Syracuse, Rutgers, Temple, Pitt, West Virginia, Cincinnati, Louisville, Navy, Maryland, Virginia Tech, NC State, Wake Forest, Georgia Tech, UCF, South Florida, and Miami. And here we get the entire eastern seaboard united in what is essentially some sort of mix of Big East and ACC. Basically every big east coast market from Boston to Miami gets in on this. The Big 12 is free of it’s weird eastern arm. The teams that wanted out of the ACC get to leave, everyone else plays on.
Big West– Houston, Baylor, SMU, TCU, Texas Tech, Oklahoma State, Kansas State, Iowa State, Air Force, Colorado State, Arizona, Arizona State, BYU, UNLV, Boise State, Washington State, Oregon State, Cal, Stanford, and San Diego State. Basically, this is the premier conference west of the Mississippi River. There is somewhat of a mix academically, and that could make it a bit interchangeable with the next conference, but it would make for fun rivalries.
PAC 20– Louisiana, Tulane, Arkansas State, Memphis,Tulsa, Sam Houston, UTSA, North Texas, Rice, Texas State, UTEP, New Mexico State, New Mexico, Utah State, Wyoming, Nevada, San Jose State, Fresno State, Sacramento State, and Hawai’i. Again, another large Western leaning conference.
American 20– Delaware, James Madison, Liberty, ODU, Appalachian State, East Carolina, Charlotte, Coastal Carolina, Georgia State, Kennesaw State, George Southern, Jacksonville State, FIU, Florida Atlantic, South Alabama, Troy, UAB, Southern Miss, Louisiana-Monroe, and Louisiana Tech. This is a more east leaning version of the last conference.
MAC– Ohio, Buffalo, Northern Illinois, Central Michigan, Western Michigan, Eastern Michigan, Toledo, Kent State, Akron, Miami Ohio, Ball State, Bowling Green, Marshall, Western Kentucky, Middle Tennessee, and Missouri State. We all love the MAC.
Independent– Notre Dame.
Ok, so now that I am sure I pissed most of you off, good. Now we move on to scheduling. Every one of these conferences should agree to an 8 game schedule inside the conference. The “power” conferences (the first three or four) should agree to 8 conference games, 2 games against other power conferences, and no FCS games. Since Notre Dame has no conference and no conference title game, they should agree to a 13 game schedule, ten of which are against power conferences, and no FCS games. In exchange, the power conferences get two automatic bids to the playoffs, and Notre Dame can qualify automatically at 10-3 or 11-2 every year. Make the season 15 weeks to give every team a week or two off.
As for the playoff- 16 teams, period. All seven conference champions qualify automatically. The “power 4” conferences get a second. Notre Dame can qualify automatically if they win enough. That gives you 11 or 12 teams in automatically every year. Four or five at-large bids for the committee to hand out as they see fit. Seed based on BCS ranking. Week one at the higher seed. Then rotated the Rose, Orange, Sugar, Cotton, Fiesta, and Peach Bowl for the next two rounds. Highest seed can pick where they go among that round’s options. The rest of the bowls continue as is.
As for the portal and the NIL, there needs to be some rules. The portal should have very specific pre and post season dates that don’t move often at all. The package the schools actually are involved with for NIL’s should have a “by sport” salary cap. You can’t regulate outside groups, but at least reign it in.
This would be my initial fix. Some people would hate it, but it’s a start.
Welp, we have updated finance numbers. If it wasn’t clear before, Ryan Crosswell is going to have the most campaign cash in the PA-7 race. The former Trump Administration Republican from DC won the money race by a lot. Since we know the DCCC values that over everything, obviously they will go looking for a sixth candidate now, right?
Anyway, here’s the numbers here in PA-7, followed by some other races of note.
Crooksy brought in $308,259.47. He has $243,615.75 on hand.
Crosswell brought in another $380,000. He has raised $701,108.08 in two reports. He has spent $266,743.94, leaving him with $433,791.14. That’s some burn rate.
Carol Obando-Derstine brought in $123,000. She has raised $317,006.02. She has spent $198,245.98, leaving her with $127,513.18. That’s a really astounding burn rate.
Lamont McClure’s report doesn’t seem to be fully up on the FEC site yet. He raised $229,000 according to press reports, which should put him at $458,386.04. He had burned through $135,267.89 in the first two reports, which should leave him at $323,118.15, minus whatever he spent this quarter. That was a fast burn rate, but we’ll see what he did this quarter.
Mark Pinsley’s report isn’t up on the FEC site yet. Press reports indicate he has raised $73,000. I have nothing to add to that.
Crosswell is raising serious cash, but spending just shy of 40% of it on staff and things that aren’t voter contact. He’s spent $266,743.94 and 10% of voters or less really know anything about him. I actually have to compliment Crooksy’s campaign, their burn rate is like half of Crosswell’s. They might catch him in money if there was more than two and a half quarters left at this rate, but they won’t. Carol’s number slowed and her burn rate is very high. McClure wrote himself most of what he raised this quarter, but the word is he stopped most of his spending so he may have a decent cash on hand number, but we’ll see about that. Pinsley’s number won’t do it. Crosswell and Crooksy have decent numbers here, but not Neary enough cash on hand with their low name ID’s. We’ll see here.
Now for context, some other numbers of note:
Paige Cognetti, the Mayor of Scranton, running in PA-8, announced she raised over $500,000 in under a month. She currently has no primary and probably won’t get one.She has $442,966.97 on hand. That district won’t be easy for her, but those are damn good numbers.
Janelle Stelson brought in $1,249,712.55. She has $969,643.79 on hand. The burn rate is a little higher, but damn!
Not enough numbers are out yet in PA-3, but so far the leaders in cash-on-hand are Sharif Street at $372,089.87 and David Oxman at $331,724.05. I’m really interested in Dr. Ala Stanford’s number to see if they hype is real.
Across the river in NJ-7, two candidates have crossed the $1 million mark raised. Rebecca Bennett still has $922,757.14 and Brian Varela has $805,278.44 left. Tina Shah has $481,396.28 on hand and Michael Roth has $290,302.11 left.
At this stage in the game, the most important number is really your cash on hand number. Sure, the DCCC and a bunch of DC types care about the total raised and quarter raise for their horse race purposes, but if you spend everything you raise, who cares? Campaigns are, in the end, about talking to voters. Right now, no one in PA-7 is really prepared to spend on the level they need.
Tom Giovanni doesn’t talk much. Up until recently his supporters were calling that a good thing. Now, as one Republican put it, “there’s no campaign.” Giovanni has barely mailed anyone, but he’s focusing in on talking to Republican voters, even telling them to vote for him to vote for Charlie Kirk- I kid you not, both county GOP groups are doing this garbage. Giovanni passed on debating Tara Zrinski for Executive, then could barely put together a sentence once he did his individual interview on WFMZ. You could see why he wasn’t saying much. It turns out Giovanni let his County Republican Party Chairman negotiate the format for him. Seriously, he’s running for Executive and won’t make basic decisions. In a recent council meeting he sat by quietly as that same chairman and one of his colleagues argued that the Executive does not have the power to set policy for the county’s elections office. That’ll probably be his excuse for not mailing ballots out if he’s Executive next year. He can’t, his party chairman said so. As I wrote about Giovanni before:
The question is not what Giovanni will do as Executive, the question is whether this man is in a coma or has a pulse at all in his own campaign. As the Republican Congressman, Republican County Party Chairman, and other two incumbent Republican Councilmen are up there focusing all of their attacks on a guy who isn’t going to be appearing on any ballots in 2025, Giovanni is either unwilling or incapable of putting together a coherent sentence, hence why he was terrified to debate Zrinski. Rather than debating, he had his Republican Party Chairman negotiate two separate appearances on WFMZ to “discuss,” or in his case lie about, the issues. This is because Giovanni is simply not capable of saying anything coherent and is better off letting better spokespeople explain his terrible plans for the County.
So what are Giovanni’s plans? Well, let’s be honest, they’re setting up to use the “mismanagement” of funds to come in and argue that it’s time to privatize/sell/close Gracedale. This has been the GOP’s position for 15 years in the county, and they’re going to go as far as they can to get it done. They’re going to use the excuse of the Federal Government cutting Medicaid and Harrisburg not really doing anything to fix it, as well. They’re going to start by demanding he acquiesce to the Council as the new Executive, then he’ll tell them it can’t be run. If the public outcry is too much, they’ll just spend their time making cuts to the place so that it becomes unworkable. Don’t kid yourself, Giovanni may not fully get it, but his handlers have made it clear to him that they oppose a safety net for county residents. It’s coming.
Next, Giovanni’s administration, either unilaterally or by acquiescing to council’s demands, will come in and chip away at access to voting in Northampton County. He’ll immediately kill the satellite voting sites, probably get rid of the four drop box locations (or at least cut them), and probably instruct the election’s office at a minimum to mail out ballots later than the current office does. He may just kill all vote by mail and early voting, citing the President’s illegal executive order on the matter. Does Giovanni fully understand this now? Who knows. He knows that he’s going to do what his handlers tell him though.
This guy is probably a nice enough guy personally, but he’s either over his head or paralyzed by all the different masters he’ll have to answer to if he wins. Apparently he recently went out of his way to say he will *not* be bringing former Executive and current Councilman John Brown in as Director of Administration or anything else. I find that interesting, as Brown is probably their most successful recent county official at winning elections (other than the one he didn’t win), but Giovanni seems to have felt the need to put that out there. Of course the answer is obvious though. County Republican Chairman Glenn Geissinger recently took a job in Schuylkill County as finance director, apparently saying he’d move there soon. I’m sure he will if Giovanni is unsuccessful. And if he wins? Geissinger gets to come take over this courthouse and get rid of vote-by-mail and vote-on-demand sites, gut Gracedale and sell it, let ICE run wild in the courthouse, and DOGE’ing as many people in the county as possible. It’s plain and obvious. He’s controlling what his party’s nominee says and where. This campaign is all about “righting the wrongs” of 2017 for him, when Zrinski was one of the four Democrats who knocked him off.
You can tell me I’m wrong, but that’s like Trump saying he didn’t know anything about Project 2025.
I got a call from a little birdy yesterday (funniest description ever) about local political goings on. There was a lot of news, on all kinds of different topics. One piece of news though was hilarious to me.
A certain member of County Council, running for re-election in 2025, apparently has told people *they* (no I’m not giving it away) plan to introduce legislation at Northampton County Council tonight to scrap the County Executive and return to the three person commissioner system that most counties use.
Say what?
Northampton County passed a Home Rule Charter that basically serves as it’s constitution. That charter created an elected Executive to run the day-to-day goings of the government. Many other counties don’t have that, and are sort of ran by a part-time Commissioner board, but are mostly run by unelected bureaucrats and people who “go along to get along” running departments. They raise taxes whenever they feel like it, and tend to do what is most popular in the government center. They don’t give a shit about public sentiment and they only answer to a bunch of commissioners who don’t really know how the government runs, because they’re not there. It’s an awful system and it isn’t responsive to the public.
I’m not going to name this council person, I like them personally and I hope that posting this ahead of time discourages their poor behavior. They are not doing this because they believe it’s a good idea, they’re doing this because they do not like the current County Executive and they do not like who they think will be the next County Executive. This is petty politics at it’s worst, the kind of mean girl shit that will make life worse for the public. If you don’t like Lamont McClure, Phil Armstrong, Tara Zrinski, or any other person who tries to be County Executive, you run a campaign against them. If people elect a County Executive twice or more, you should just tip your cap- they do represent what the public wants. Running around talking about being a check on elected power, when the voters can kick out that official if they want, is simply living in denial. Deciding you’re going to get rid of the office because you think the voters are going to vote for a third time the opposite of what you think they should is anti-democracy behavior of the worst type. I know this kind of bullshit behavior is par for the course in MAGA right now, but hopefully we’re not going to see this individual try this crap with the county government.
Apocalypse Vibes 