Bob “Crooksy” Brooks should be a salesman. Apparently Josh Shapiro has been convinced that Crooksy is good for his personal political ambitions, and he’s going to endorse him. Of course, they’ve been saying that since July, but still. The good ole’ boys from Harrisburg have been up here telling people to endorse him, because the Governor will be “soon.” Only a couple did, and for all the wrong reasons. Most people don’t want to support a racist, a religious gun-nut fundamentalist, and guy who stole from his mother-in-law and didn’t pay her back for 14 years, even losing on appeal. You would think in a Democratic primary the racism alone, let alone the embrace of political violence, would do it. Ryan Mackenzie has nothing to fear if he gets to run against this crook. No normal person is going to trust a guy who broke a contract with his mother-in-law for 14 years, it shows you exactly who he is. People aren’t going to vote for a guy who lies, steals, and pulls underhanded moves to take over his union. Bob “Crooksy” Brooks is just another Tulsi Gabbard or John Fetterman.
Crooksy is either a real good salesman, delusional, or just hilarious. Now he’s claiming he’s going to get endorsed by Gavin Newsom, according to sources. Look, I’d say he’s full of shit, but he did get Deadbeat Bernie Sanders to endorse him, which is both political malpractice and hilarious. You know what they say about crooks of a feather? But Newsom? Really? Coming across the country to endorse a guy who stiffed his mother-in-law? Gavin Newsom wants to embrace the latest marginal intellect white savior complex candidate endorsed by the bolsheviks? That helps him how? He wants to tell Black voters he is for the guy who hates Kaepernick for kneeling?
There is definitely an element within the Democratic operative world that thinks we need to run communists and bigoted white guys. They think a guy with a Nazi tattoo is what we need to win in Maine. They’re not right though, and Newsom is smart enough to know that. So why would this be? The #2 guy at the IAFF is their head guy in California, and I’m just taking a shot in the dark here, but he may be the link. Perhaps it’s a very low brain wave version of political chess, where one Governor thinks he can get a major endorsement for his quixotic 2028 Presidential campaign, and the other Governor then is convinced he absolutely needs to get in on this too, so nobody gets the credit. I mean, I’m spit balling here. It’s definitely not worth the trouble though.
Look, this is borderline hilarious. Given what a narcissist this guy is, he probably opened an email from Newsom and thinks he’s getting his endorsement now. As one out of the Valley lawmaker puts it, “we all like Bob, but none of us think he can do it.” He’s way nicer than I. If I didn’t know the place he tended bar, I wouldn’t believe he was smart enough to tend bar. Bartenders I know are the smartest people out there, they know when to get cut off a bad situation. This guy is trying to drink from a fire hose while a raging inferno blazes in front of him. The problem is, the powerful and brilliant minds that gave us the 2024 Democratic Party in Harrisburg and Washington are trying to astroturf this guy a victory. This is like handing a mentally ill person a loaded AR-15.
I’m seriously putting the over/under at 2.5 State Legislators standing behind Julian Guridy when he announces his campaign for PA-22 tomorrow. I’m sure all the regulars will be there. But here’s the thing- Julian seems to have his own resume to sell though. He’s been an aide to State Senator Nick Miller and has a great reputation for that. He’s been building up for this. He seems like a very strong candidate and I think he’ll make a good representative for center city Allentown.
While the party will pick who runs in the special election to replace County Executive-Elect Siegel, there will be a primary in May, and it looks like it might be crowded. CeCe Gerlach, a city councilwoman who runs with the support of the Working Families Party, will be a formidable candidate in that race. CeCe has detractors, but I doubt anyone will say with a straight face that anyone will out work her as a campaigner. Allentown activist Jessica Ortiz also has a Facebook page for a campaign for this seat, but I haven’t seen a formal announcement yet. Ortiz has people who will show up to back her. Neither of these ladies will lay down and play dead for Guridy in this race.
There are already some hate merchants out there leading whisper campaigns here, and unfortunately this race could get ugly. I hope not though. I doubt we’ve heard anywhere near the end of this one.
I’m an OG Bernie hater. When his online weirdos put me on their hate list in 2017, it was a badge of honor. I knew then that he was a grifter. His campaign, his super pac (Our Revolution), and his institute (Sanders Institute) all employed his family. Some of his organizations bought his books (great for royalties). He made a profit off of running for office. So he kept running for President in a political party that he slams repeatedly and isn’t a member of. It’s a great existence, for him. He disowns all the stuff that is inconvenient for him, vaguely claims the populist stance, and makes a lot of money off of it. It’s easy to see the guy isn’t real.
I also never trust the people he elevates as our “future.” He has given us some real doozies. Bernie gave us Tulsi Gabbard (who literally had an internal campaign “hate” list that they put me on too). Tulsi Gabbard told us Assad in Syria was “not an enemy,” essentially blaming the U.S. for Russia invading Ukraine, and that Hillary Clinton is drugged and refusing to back her over her foreign policy and cheating Bernie out of the nomination. Today, Tulsi Gabbard is Trump’s Director of National Intelligence, claiming that Russia did not seek to help Trump in 2016 (they did), contradicting a GOP lead Senate report saying they did. Gabbard’s revisionist history is the backbone of the government’s case that former Obama era intelligence leaders lied to Congress and tried to frame Trump. In short, Tulsi Gabbard is a psychopath. Bernie Sanders told us she’s not. Of course, she got her rise by being a trusted friend to Bernie.
Happy Saturday, friends… and enemies too! You see, I have a very, very good idea of my audience on this blog, and well, that impacts what I write here. I’d love to write my thoughts on the Sixers, or next year’s Foo Fighters tour, or the Phillies off-season. I write about how Bernie Sanders sucks and what’s wrong with Ryan Crosswell and Bob Brooks, and you read it though. Yesterday, I talked about how the Allentown crew put self preservation over what’s right, and you read it. You know who you are. A couple thousand hits in the immediate hours after can be confusing, but I still know who most of these readers are. Readers in Arlington, in Washington, in Philadelphia, in Rockville, in Ashburn, in Brooklyn, in White Plains, in Allentown, in Bangor (ok, this one slightly confuses me), in Easton, in McKeesport, in Bethlehem, in Princeton, in Camp Hill, in Braddock, in Phillipsburg, in Hazleton, in Harrisburg… shit, I’m going to be honest, some of you read this so much that I actually am like 99% I know who each of you are. I know who my daily reader from Nazareth is. I also know why you read this, because I pretty much know who you are. And look, that’s great. I write this so someone reads it. I don’t write it to read myself.
Most of you reading this enjoy it. Some of you (hey opposition researchers!) send me into to post here. When I’m reasonably sure it’s true, I post it. Some of you wonder why, and even are critical of me doing it, as if Rich Wilkins not posting something a.) makes it untrue, b.) means it won’t get out. It is a uniquely poor trait of Pennsylvania politicos, more so than any of the other states I’ve been in, that we think we can keep secrets. We can’t. I’m not on any of the campaigns right now, I’m not paying for this stuff, it’s so easy to find that any idiot could do it. Which gets to my other point here- most of you enjoy reading this blog, but yesterday the smoke coming from Allentown looked like a mushroom cloud. One subject was sending the post around complaining, one actually complained to me personally (one talked to me and we actually joked about it, but I’ll leave that for another time), and one is probably already reading this and fuming. I could hear the words that I’m sure came out of one of their mouths- “Rich is a nobody anyway and no one cares what he says.”- while literally talking about what I wrote. Hey, I like irony. The truth is, there’s lots more to come on Crooksy and others. I already have some of it. I’ll print it when I want to. Assuming I want to. And you should be glad I do. If I’ve found all this on a zero dollar budget, don’t you think Ryan Mackenzie has this and more (he does)? At least by me writing it, you know about it now, not when it’s hitting you in the face.
Look, I’m not your boss. I’m not your dad. I’m not your Governor. I give you information, if you don’t care about that, it’s fine. If you’re fine with racism, fine. If you’re fine with extremism, fine. If you’re fine with political violence, that’s not fine, but you can be. If you’re fine with being untrustworthy, fine. Look, if you think Kaepernick was an ass for kneeling during the national anthem, that’s your choice. Bob Brooks agrees with you. Just own that though. Don’t claim he’s changed, because now he’s telling you he did because it’s good politics. Don’t claim it was “just a messy divorce,” when he didn’t pay his mother-in-law back one penny for over 14 years before she sued him. She had him sign a contract after four years of not being paid, and he still didn’t pay her. Just own it. If you’re fine with this because the guy’s union gave you a few bucks for your re-election, I actually totally get it. Just be real with yourself. He doesn’t dispute that he got sued and lost, hell he appealed it and lost. He doesn’t claim he didn’t post racist and extremist memes, he just says that was then. Hell, Ryan Crosswell at least tries to claim he wasn’t “really” a Republican, even though he re-registered in multiple states, and that he only worked on non-competes, not union busting as a private lawyer. Crooksy pretty much admits everything. Or just says it doesn’t matter.
Blogs aren’t the real world. This blog will not move voters next year. Maybe a few of you won’t vote for one candidate or another over something I show, but my audience is in the thousands, and as I stated above, you live in lots of different districts. Basically 90% of you are here reading for politics. A few of you are here reading about the other topics, and you’re my favorites. Most of what I write on this blog is for my audience’s interest though, a bunch of politicos. Sometimes it really reaches a broader audience, of politicos who never met me before. That’s great. This blog can only serve as a guide to how to win an election, it’s not going to get it done on it’s own. That takes money and mass communication with voters. That is not happening here on this page.
I think Matt Tuerk is a pretty good Mayor of Allentown. Mike Schlossberg and Pete Schweyer do a fine job representing their districts. I don’t think any of them are racists or anything. None of them are religious radicals or gun nuts either, in fact they’re pretty far left on those issues. In fact, none of them would stiff their mother-in-law either. I would be surprised if any of them actually, personally approve of the behavior that Bob Brooks has displayed. I’m frankly shocked they’re not endorsing Carol Obando Derstein, who they have all known for years. They all supported Susan Wild for years, but they are breaking with her to back a random guy from Northampton County. They’re supporting a guy who has a demonstrated history of racial insensitivity and represent a majority-minority city. It’s rather surprising.
Let’s be honest, the Allentown Fire Fighters are essentially Crooksy’s political shop, and they’re going to make supporting him a litmus test. Look, I get it. It’s much easier to work with them than against them. I’m sure the Governor’s minions are also making clear they want them to do this. It’s much better to have other people do the endorsing, after all. Endorsing Crooksy is the easy way out, and it makes people happy in powerful places. The insiders want to pick this guy, not because he can win (he can’t), but because it helps their aspirations. It’s not about you and your life, it’s about them and their future aspirations.
Populism isn’t a winning strategy, and the numbers on Tuesday again bare that out. Mamdani did considerably worse, against lesser opposition, than say Mikie Sherrill did. None of these people can seriously argue that an inexperienced candidate with personal baggage, a history of racism, and outlier views on guns and school prayer, is going to be a good Congressman. At best, he’s Fetterman. At worst, he’s a loser. Unfortunately, people are being rewarded for doing things they don’t believe in right now. That’s a real shame. Bob Brooks showed you who he is before he decided to run for public office. Anything he says now is candidate speak and shouldn’t be trusted. According to the Pennsylvania Superior Court, Bob “Crooksy” Brooks shouldn’t be trusted either.
No, this isn’t a real person, really for real here.
A socialist was elected Mayor of New York City. That’s really not shocking. Trump had 69% disapproval amongst NYC voters yesterday, and the only other real option was Andrew Cuomo. I don’t need to add to that. 50.4% selecting Zohran Mamdani given that Donald Trump was backing Andrew Cuomo and the other guy was a vigilante, is not all that impressive. If Mamdani wasn’t a socialist and didn’t make it clear he doesn’t like Jewish people, he’d probably have reached 69%. The fact that he didn’t means a lot of anti-Trump voters couldn’t come around to backing him. In fact, only a little better than 7 in 10 anti-Trump voters selected him, and I assume the rest probably voted for Cuomo. When you think about it that way, it’s not so wildly impressive.
Ok, here’s the small reality check, if you need one. Yesterday definitely suggested 2026 could be a really good year for Democrats. Joe Emrick might finally lose. We should beat Ryan Mackenzie if we nominate the right candidate. Let’s go back to the Mamdani example for a moment, and treat him as charitably as we can. Let’s assume he’d still get 7 in 10 anti-Trump voters in the Lehigh Valley and everywhere, even though most of the places we are going to discuss are less liberal than the Big Apple. 55% of New Jersey voters didn’t approve of Trump. If Mamdani got the same 73% of the anti-Trump vote there, he would be at 40.15%. Mikie Sherrill got 56.3% in the actual New Jersey race, or a bit more than 100% of those votes. How about in Virginia, where 56% of voters didn’t approve of Trump? That comes out to 40.88%. Abigail Spanberger got 57.2%, or also just north of 100% of anti-Trump voters. Sherrill and Spanberger got about 102% of the anti-Trump vote and Mamdani got 73%. More of the country will have Trump’s negatives in the 50’s and maybe low 60’s next year, as opposed to New York City’s 69%. Since Mamdani literally got a bare majority of the vote with Trump at 69% disapproval, you would basically need Trump’s actual disapproval to be at 68% in any district to be able to win with a candidate like Mamdani. That’s not going to be the case in any competitive race. For argument’s sake, California had Trump’s disapproval at 63% last night. If Mamdani got that same 73% of anti-Trump vote in California, he’d be at 45.99%. There are going to be a lot of races on the board in California next year. A socialist candidate viewed as friendly to Hamas/oppositional to Israel, like Mamdani, would probably lose in many California seats. For what it’s worth, Proposition 50, the re-districting question, got 63.9% of the vote, or roughly 101% of anti-Trump votes.
Here in the Lehigh Valley, Nadeem Qayyum won a seat on the Northampton County Council. Let me be clear, I didn’t support him. I waited until after the election to say this because it’s not my place, but Qayyum told members of the Lehigh Valley Labor Council in an endorsement interview that he planned to announce after he was elected that he was the first socialist elected in Northampton County. Even Nadeem knew he had to hide some things. Even as Nadeem lied about being a socialist, he still only got 85.25% of what Tara Zrinski received with the same voters. We know even less about Theresa Fadem. Never the less, they won in spite of plenty of other problems. All of the Democrats beat all of the Republicans though, and by a lot (almost 10,000 votes out of 91,000 votes cast). I’ll get deeper into this later, but the key to the Democratic victory *appears* to not just be vote-by-mail, which was up by close to 5,000 votes in the end, but actually the Election Day surge of anti-Trump voters. Election Day voting was up by 14,000 votes from 2023 to 2025. It’s rather clear by the margins that these people were voting for Democrats, and Democrats only.
So what does all of this mean here? Let’s assume for a second that Tara Zrinski and Josh Siegel got an even 100% of the anti-Trump votes last night in the County Executive races. That’s 59.38% in Northampton County and 60.61% in Lehigh County. A Mamdani-like candidate would get 43.35% in Northampton County and 44.25% in Lehigh County. That’s also assuming next year’s electorate is exactly like this year’s, and well, look at the 2022 numbers (which probably won’t be exact either, but still much closer) in Northampton and Lehigh. You go from just shy of 187,000 votes in the two counties to well over 260,000. The GOP, even if they’re doing awful, will do a little better than this year, and I’m not including Carbon, which actually voted NO on retention for the Supreme Court Judges last night, so Trump may still be in the positive there. I’ll go with the average in Northampton and Lehigh County though today, 60% anti-Trump voters. That’s 43.8%.
Where am I going with this? Well first off, Mark Pinsley basically has the same policy views as Mamdani (I don’t consider him to be as bad of a guy), so nominating him is very likely to end in a loss. Then there’s Bob Brooks, a guy who has deep flaws that cut across party lines, and has the same consultants as Mamdani, and is supported by Bernie Sanders, Ro Khanna, a large cadre of the Mamdani supporters on the national level. Assuming Democrats can stomach the racism and other issues, he doesn’t deteriorate further than Mamdani’s share of the anti-Trump vote, Brooks is probably not doing much better than 44% because his policies and rhetoric is Mamdani’s rhetoric. I’m sure he’ll try to distance himself, like say John Fetterman, but does anyone want to send another version of Shrek to Congress. And what if he does fool people into thinking he’s not a bad guy, like Fetterman? Maybe he gets the more like 85% of the anti-Trump vote and gets to 51.15%, not factoring in Carbon and increased Republican turnout? He still probably narrowly loses. Candidates like Bob Brooks are gigantic risks to maybe lose a winnable race, or be the next John Fetterman. He should be DOA in the PA-7 Democratic Primary, and any efforts to push him by the state Democratic Party are emphatically stupid. We don’t need the Harrisburg insiders pushing their candidate.
As for Ryan Crosswell? Maybe he could win a general election running as a union busting, Trump Democrat. Why would you want that?
Candidates like Zohran Mamdani are fine for New York City. I wish he had lost, and I think the result was bad for New York, but they chose him. Candidates like Zohran Mamdani are not going to win us seats like NJ-7 or PA-7. Candidates like Mamdani wouldn’t represent upgrades in state legislative races in the Lehigh Valley either. We need to reject these folks. Failure to do so will not be unlike Tea Party Republicans nominating the “witch lady” for Delaware Senate in 2020, but they also have the longterm impact the Tea Party had on the GOP as well. I don’t want the Democratic Party to simply be a liberal flip side of the Trump coin. It won’t win, and it’s bad for America.
There’s going to be a lot of ink wasted on what happened yesterday. People are going to try and argue that Sherrill and Spanberger prove that moderate Dems win, which I tend to believe in more purple districts and statewide races. Others are going to argue that Mamdani shows that bold progressives win. It’s quite frankly a stupid argument. What kind of Democrat didn’t win? Are there things to learn about 2026 from the data? Yes. Ultimately what you should take away first and foremost from this is that when your actions, be it a trade war, shutting down the government, cutting people’s health care, or yanking their food stamps, end up making people worried about their next meal, their housing, their job, or their health care, you’re probably going to lose. This isn’t ideological. It’s survival.
Terry Fadem and Nadeem Quyyum had basically no resources, and beat the Republican candidates for County Council by over 13,000 and 9,000 votes each. Tara Zrinski meanwhile ran a hard campaign and earned a record breaking margin and became the first woman elected as Northampton County Executive. Jeremy Clark ran hard for his win on the Northampton County Court of Common Pleas, while Mark Stanziola was largely outspent in Lehigh County where he won easily. Democrats won the Bucks row offices with moderates, while they won state legislative seats in Virginia with all different candidates. There was no one specific type of Democrat that won tonight. Yes, some types won by more. None were really all that close though. And I can’t come up with a competitive race that they really lost. Nothing really mattered.
Running for office is hard, and the fact that this was simply a unanimous decision tonight doesn’t take away from the achievement of running a successful campaign. These people all put their names and reputations on the line in hopes of winning a race, and I salute them for that. With that said, there’s no deeper message in tonight. Donald Trump went too far, and voters reacted. They both gave large percentages of the vote to Democrats, and turned out in greater numbers than we had ever seen before. If you put your name on the ballot as a Democrat tonight in a place Democrats had any chance to win, you won. If you were a Democrat who crossed over, like Pat Dugan in Philadelphia, Ed Ducal in Allentown, or Roger Maclean in Lehigh County, you got your ass kicked. There was no interest in any of that. Even decently liked Republicans lost races tonight in any county or two that was even moderately purple. This was an outright rejection of Trump. Trump will never again be on the ballot, and Republicans haven’t done well trying to be like Trump when he’s not on the ballot too. Make of that what you will. Last night was far more decisive than any previous beating.
In recent years, Lehigh County is a different place than it used to be. Even as late as my college years, Lehigh County was considered harder for Democrats to win than Northampton. Boy, that’s changed. Beginning with Don Cunningham and carrying through Tom Mueller and Phil Armstrong, the GOP has been kept out of the County Executive’s seat for 20 years. Something tells me Roger Maclean isn’t the guy to stop that trend, but let’s hold that thought a second.
Right now, Lehigh County turnout looks fairly similar to Northampton County turnout. Likely Election Day voters plus those who have already returned a vote-by-mail ballot come out to 76,788 voters. Democrats hold the edge, 36,677 to 33,170. That’s not an overwhelming blowout. The 6,941 independent and third party voters we are expecting could easily tip this election either way. There are 8,253 vote-by-mail ballots still out though, and Democrats hold an edge of they lean towards the Democrats by 2,487. Basically, this is a mirror image of Northampton County, with Democrats holding an edge of around 3,500 votes and looking to gain through the remaining vote-by-mail ballots. Republicans either need to win a landslide with independent and third party voters, get an unusual number of Democrats to cross over, or need to turn out a lot of unlikely Election Day voters. None of this seems highly likely, but it is notable that the Lehigh County GOP may be in no worse of shape than their Northampton County brethren.
Roger Maclean, like Tom Giovanni, is a former Democrat. I find neither to be overly exciting, but I’m also not ready to say they’re the craziest people the GOP could have ran. Giovanni made his switch many years ago though, and has had time to prove himself to his party’s voters. Maclean basically made his move last week. Will a few thousand unlikely Republican voters make the trip to the polls today to vote for him? I highly doubt it. Will Maclean pull over a substantial number of Democratic voters? That’s probably his hope, but I doubt it happens in this environment. He’s had to straddle appeasing his MAGA base and appealing to moderates this whole race, and that’s going to make this really hard. For Maclean to win this, he’ll probably need a high number of crossover voters and need a blowout with independents. He just didn’t run the kind of campaign that probably does that. Northampton County’s GOP might hold human sacrifices in the Slate Belt somewhere and Lehigh’s version holds witch trials in Schnecksville or something. I’m basically saying their leadership isn’t allowing a whole lot of sanity from their ranks, and that makes it very hard to win these off year races.
There is one more way to look at this race though, and that’s to look at it compared to recent past elections. In 2023, 75,127 people cast a ballot. 51,622 of them voted on Election Day, while 23,123 voted by mail. The Democrats won every statewide judicial race in the County by *at least* 4,999 votes, they swept the Commissioner at-large seats 4-0 with a 4,500 vote margin from their 4th candidate to the GOP’s first, and won both County row office races by more than 8%. They were considerably more competitive in 2021. That year, 74,108 people voted overall, with 51,183 voting on Election Day and 22,214 voting by mail. Those numbers are not wildly different than 2023. The GOP actually won two of the four statewide Judicial seats in the county. They won 2 of the 3 seats on the Court of Common Pleas. They lost the Executive race by only 2,618 votes, a margin that was close enough that Phil Armstrong at one point was conceding that he lost the race. Republicans won 3 of the 5 Commissioner district seats up that year. This at least has to make you stop and pause for a second. It’s not like Glenn Eckhart, who lost a couple of Controller races, is Pat Toomey or Charlie Dent. He almost won though. The turnout wasn’t really much different than 2023, or what I’m predicting today. One has to think then that it was simply who voted in 2021, as opposed to 2023. School board results in Parkland, East Penn, and Southern Lehigh swung pretty hard from 2021 to 2023, so either the voters really changed their mind or they were different voters. Maybe today we’ll answer that. Signs aren’t great for the GOP though. There are already more ballots returned than there were in 2021 or 2023. They’re probably going to get crushed in the mail. They’re down more than 9,700 on registration, not quite as bad as Northampton, but probably too much to take.
My guess is that Democrats win the Executive seat and the GOP wins the Judge seat. Patricia Mulqueen has a record that probably pulls over some Democrats to vote for her, Lehigh County voters do tend to cross lines in judge races. Josh Siegel outspent Roger Maclean by a 10:1 margin and certainly isn’t a heretic to Democratic voters. I think Siegel wins this race by 4-5,000 votes, with independents generally breaking the Democrats way in Lehigh County. What I would watch for, interestingly, is Allentown. Matt Tuerk won the primary by a landslide and the general election never came to fruition then. Will voters show up? Will Latinos continue to slide away from Democrats? How much of that retired Mack Trucks base of white voters will show up for Maclean, who really should be their kind of candidate on paper? If Allentown looks like normal, and Siegel simply holds what he should in the larger suburban towns, this won’t be a nail biter. If a good chunk of the remaining vote-by-mail comes in, Siegel could win this going away.
Larry Holmes turned 76 years old today. He is, without question, one of the top ten, and probably one of the top five heavyweight boxers of all-time, when he was in his prime. He is often overlooked by new fans, in part because he wasn’t a trash talker, but also because his style of boxing was purely fundamental and not the kind of excitement that an Ali or Tyson gave us. One isn’t better than the other, but Larry’s jab worked well for him. So well that he held some variation of the heavyweight championship for 7 years. Among his victories, he defeated Ken Norton, Muhammad Ali, Ernie Shavers, Mike Weaver, Gerry Cooney, Tim Witherspoon, Carl Williams, and Marvis Frazier. He was at 48-0 before the mafia outright robbed him he fell short of tying Rocky Marciano’s 49-0 record in his match with Leon Spinks in 1985. Everyone in Easton will tell you “they know” Larry, that’s everybody but me. I actually have met him plenty of times, but that’s different from knowing someone. I do know Larry Jr., and he’s an absolutely great dude (go check out his new cigar bar, Legends, which is opening in downtown Easton). So I know Mr. and Mrs. Holmes did a great job at that.
Is Larry the greatest athlete to ever come out of the Lehigh Valley? He might be. Mario Andretti is the only man to ever win the Indy 500, Daytona 500, and Formula One Championship though, so there’s an argument that he is also a top ten, or even top five athlete of all-time in his sport. Larry has competition to just be the greatest athlete ever to come out of Easton though- Bobby Weaver won the Olympic Gold Medal in Los Angeles in 1984 in freestyle wrestling. It would be really hard to argue against any of them as the best ever. There are competitors though.
Joe Kovacs of Bethlehem Catholic is a three time Olympic Silver Medalist in the Shot Put, and has won two World Championships. Stan Dziedzic of Allen won an Olympic Bronze Medal in Wrestling at the 1976 Olympics, to go with his three NCAA Division II and one Division I championship. Andre Reed of Dieruff is in the Pro Football Hall-of-Fame and started in FOUR Super Bowls. Saquon Barkley obviously won last year’s Super Bowl with the Eagles and was named Offensive Player of the Year. His fellow Whitehall Zephyrs Matt Millen and Dan Koppen won four and two Super Bowls in their NFL careers. Jim Ringo of Phillipsburg won Super Bowl I and another championship on his way to making both the Packers and Eagles Hall-of-Fame. Ned Bolcar of Phillipsburg won an NCAA Championship for Notre Dame’s 1988 team and played in the NFL. Chuck “Concrete” Charlie of Liberty High School was a two way menace for the Eagles and won two championships. Kristen Maloney was an Olympic Bronze Medal winning gymnast out of Pen Argyl. Sandy Koufax is one of the greatest pitchers of all time and resides in the Center Valley area. Darian Cruz wrestled in the 2024 Olympics and finished 5th. Marty Nothstein, long before politics, won an Olympic Silver (’96 Atlanta) and Gold (2000 Sydney) in track cycling. Meredith Sholder of Emmaus played on the 2024 U.S. Olympic Field Hockey team. Curt Simmons from Whitehall pitched on the 1950 NL Champion Phillies and made three All-Star Games. Brian Schneider of Northampton had a long MLB career with the Expos, Nationals, Mets, and Phillies. Anthony Recker of Catasauqua was a catcher for the A’s, Cubs, and Mets. Matt McBride from Liberty appeared for the A’s and Rockies. Aaron Gray of Emmaus had a decent run in the NBA, mostly as a member of the Chicago Bulls. You can’t forget defending Super Bowl Champion Jahan Dotson of Nazareth. Cindy Werley of Emmaus was on the 1996 Olympic Field Hockey Team. Kevin and Kyzir White of Emmaus have had notable NFL careers, with Kyzir playing for the Eagles 2022 Super Bowl team. Tyrese Martin of Allen is on the Brooklyn Nets right now. Damn, this list got long.
One would be really hard pressed to make a Mount Rushmore of Lehigh Valley sports without Larry Holmes, Mario Andretti, Chuck Badnarik, and Bobby Weaver. You could certainly argue for Matt Millen, Andre Reed, Dan Koppen, Saquon Barkley, Marty Nothstein, and Jim Ringo, and I won’t say you’re wrong. Either way, the Easton Assassin has to be on any list, and I hope he had a great birthday.
It will all be over tomorrow, folks. To a large extent, we sort of know what’s happening already. There are about 40,210 highly likely Election Day voters. The Republicans hold a substantial lead amongst them of 6,111 votes. There are 3,417 independent and third party voters who are likely to show up tomorrow. Two years ago, 47,015 people voted on Election Day. Tara Zrinski got 18,628 votes and lost them by a little bit over 7,500. I am predicting 48,392 Election Day voters tomorrow. Republicans will have a 6,729 vote advantage over Democrats. There will be just over 5,000 independent and third party voters. Tom Giovanni and the Republican ticket will win Election Day by a hair under 8,000. If you’re watching for anything, it’s whether we cross 49 or 50 thousand Election Day votes, and whether his margin is more than 8,000.
Two years ago, 25,421 people voted by mail. Democrats crushed the Republicans with these voters. Zrinski won this group by 13,331 and actually did a little worse than the statewide court numbers. Democratic numbers are a little down from that height though. 16,175 Democrats have returned their ballots, compared to 6,034 Republicans. That’s an edge of 10,141. There are 2,500 independent and third party votes in. Election Day independents probably break Republican and vote by mail independents tend to break Democratic. For argument’s sake, if that’s the case here, Democrats probably come out 10,600 votes up, and Zrinski wins by a little under 3,000 votes. Of course, that’s assuming more votes don’t come in. We’re at 24,709 in already, so it’s probably a bit crazy to think most of the remaining ballots come in. There are 9,150 of them still out there though, and Democrats hold an advantage of 3,020 amongst their registration. Republicans are definitely doing a bit better than 2023 amongst vote by mail voters, but they’d still be happy if less of these votes came in.
Tom Giovanni is probably not going to win tomorrow. The numbers are better for him than they were for John Cusick against Zrinski in 2023 though. Zrinski won the Controller race by 5,775 that year. She’s only going to get to that number if like 3 or 4 thousand more vote by mail ballots come in, or she crushes him with independents. As of right now, I expect turnout to be slightly higher than 2023, something in the neighborhood of 74,000, and I expect Zrinski to win by about 2,600 votes, which is just shy of 4%. So she gets about 51% and he gets about 47%. Is there a path for Giovanni though? Yes. First, I think he has to hope that less than 1,500 more vote by mail ballots come in. Second, he needs to crush it with Election Day independent voters and win the independent voters who voted by mail. Then he’ll need at least some portion of Democrats to come over and vote for him, beyond the usual. That’s a lot, and he and his party did not run a campaign that was advantageous for that. As usual, they followed the conventional wisdom that most of their voters will vote on Election Day. That’s great and all, but it isn’t worth a cup of coffee at Wawa if that’s not enough voters to win. They also messaged entirely at their base with a Charlie Kirk mailer, and weirdly put out signs asking “Where’s the money Lamont?,” as if a.) anyone knows what that means, b.) they actually wanted to drag the guy that crushed them the last two Executive races into the race, and c.) he was their opponent. The strategy was bizarre and made no sense. I think it will probably cost them a relatively close Executive race, a very close judge race, and any shot at the majority on County Council (they need to win 4 seats tomorrow). I think Democrats Dave Holland and Lori Vargo Heffner and Republican Sam Elias will win seats tomorrow night. I would predict the Democrats to win four for sure, but Democrats drop off much faster as we go down the ballot. I think Theresa Fadem and Jason Boulette will be in a very close race with Republicans John Goffredo and John Brown. My guess is Fadem and Goffredo hang on. For Zrinski to be able to govern, she will need two Democrats besides Vargo Heffner to win, so she needs Holland, Fadem, and Boulette to have good nights. If it’s a good night for Republicans and Giovanni over performs, they absolutely could get Elias, Goffredo, and Brown through. I just don’t think I see them getting four seats unless Giovanni wins.
Apocalypse Vibes 