I don’t know Ana Tiburcio, but I feel bad for her. Getting up and debating in a televised setting for any office takes a level of confidence that like 99% of people don’t have. Then you add on that a lot of the people criticizing her now were going to say she sounded out of her depth no matter what, and it’s kind of a no win situation. She was debating a perennial candidate in Bob Smith, so he’s comfortable being lost up there, and she’s supposed to win, and nothing she did was going to be good enough, and yeah- it’s hard as hell. I want to give her some grace for that debate performance because I know it isn’t easy.

With that said, we are talking about an election that decides who controls a 102-101 election, and by extension, the well being of millions of Pennsylvanians. Tiburcio is supposed to win, and should, but it’s fair to expect her to do some real basic things in a debate. She had a job to introduce herself and her work to the public in the debate. When your leading achievement that *you* cite on the school board is community engagement, you need to go into some depth for us about that engagement- what you’ve learned, some precise stories you’ve heard, some details. I wasn’t sure from that debate if she had mastered her current job, let alone shown us she’s ready for this one. She also had a job to introduce us to her opponent. When she had a chance to ask him three questions, she decided on the second one to say, “I think I know enough about him already.” That’s wonderful. You as the candidate aren’t the audience. The voters are. They need to know more about him, and you have to assume they don’t know yet. When you combine these problems with the consistent answer of “I’ll ask the legislators,” a reasonable person could be left standing there asking, is the Democratic candidate as prepared to actually do the job as the Republican? Or is she literally being put forward as literally a proxy vote in that district for the other two state reps in Allentown? I’ll leave out the criticisms of the bizarre things (calling Josh Siegel a “five… out of ten” in the seat before her because she couldn’t find his office was weird shit), but I think it would be fair to ask if this is going to be an independent person and legislator in Harrisburg or if everything down to district office staff will be picked in the other two offices.

Which leads us to the subject of Ce-Ce Gerlach in this race. Ce-Ce is a bit to my left, as I think you could guess from the blog. With that said, no competent adult watched that debate and can honestly say Ce-Ce wouldn’t have been a more prepared candidate to do this job in March when the winner is seated. She was passed over because the folks pulling the strings here, the other major electeds in Allentown, don’t want her. I’m not sure why one blessed voter in Allentown should care what they want? When the other option was someone who was working on state issues as an aide to the State Senator, I think that was easy to excuse. He was ready to do the job. That does not seem to be the case now. If this races doesn’t change (i.e.- add candidates) between now and May, I have literally no argument for why a person should not vote for Ce-Ce Gerlach. In fact, I’ll be honest, they should. If that upsets some of the folks who are “leaders” in Allentown, so be it.

Allentown has weird politics. In the past year the Mayor beat a “Make Allentown Great Again” style candidate 80-20%, a noose was planted in City Hall, allegedly by the person who claimed it was put on their desk, and the “conservative” wing of City Council went away for the first time in forever. Don’t get this twisted, Easton and Bethlehem have their quirks too, but Allentown can be on it’s own planet sometimes. While the utter disgusting corruption of the Pawlowski era is gone now, the old idea of a couple of leaders sitting around and dividing out the spoils among the peasants that are loyal to them is still there. We’re seeing the ugly side effects of that manifest themselves in this race now. It isn’t a pretty sight to watch.