Allentown election roundup: Ott wins Lehigh County Executive race, more local results

These are the people that make our government work. They populate the school boards and the boards of supervisors. They work hard for little or no pay and get a lot of grief in return. I’d like to profile a few.

Scott Ott ran for Lehigh County Executive. I expected a 65% to 35% win for his opponent. The party expected the same. While Democrats rallied behind their standard bearer, Don Cunningham, I can’t think of a single time I heard GOP candidate say how they wanted to work with Scott to change government. Every time I wrote, I assumed Scott would lose. Every story was based on the premise that there would be a Democrat as County executive.

The Republicans struggled to field a candidate. Ott emerged at the last minute. Nobody wanted to take on Cunningham but Ott did it. He ran a good campaign. He ran to win. He didn’t run as a symbolic gesture. He wanted to change government.

It was David v. Goliath. Then, Goliath made a big mistake. He actually shot his slingshot at David. We Americans love an underdog and if the big bully picks on the underdog, we rally. The infamous “he can’t lose unless he is caught in bed with three unwilling nuns” lead of Don Cunningham evaporated under some really poor campaign decisions. The backlash was on.

As returns slowly came in from the rural areas, the Cunningham lead, which was never what we thought it would be started to dwindle. Heavy turnout in the suburbs thanks to some really heated races helped but with 11% of the vote left to be counted Ott closed to within 2%. He never made up that margin but he clearly beat the point spread and he made a point of his own.

Don’t get dirty when you have a big lead and never pit your opponent against the IRS. David v. Goliath is bad enough but we’d favor Osama Bin Laden over the IRS!

Marc Basist ran for Lehigh County Commissioner in my district. I wish I could have voted for both Marc and Percy Dougherty. Percy has 16 years of government service at the county level and many before that in the township. He is a full-time commissioner on part-time pay and will likely continue as chairman. Marc made his first run for office. He ran because he thought he could make a difference.

Marc was a bit naïve politically and that is what made his campaign great. He told you what he thought. He asked you for advice. He listened. He ran not for personal gain but out of a sense of duty. He genuinely struggled with the fear that he would win and that it would devastate his opponent who as put so much energy into his role as commissioner. After all, Marc was far younger, still actively employer, has a young family and a very active civic life. Percy’s life seems to revolve around county government. Marc genuinely showed concern that it might be unfair to take that from Percy.

Marc did not have a politician’s grasp of the issues. He had a citizen’s view. With 9 on the Board of Commissioners, it would be nice to have that view. But, the voters overwhelmingly returned Percy and that was likely the right choice. Still, we need people like Marc to be involved in government.

Gerry Phillips ran for Washington Township Supervisor. He is not a politician. He ran because he didn’t like the way his township was. He had little concern for personal gain. I ran into him outside one of three polling places as he and his wife and supporters were taking down the details of the returns. He lost in that district (it appears) based on a write-in for the guy he beat in the primary. He was a bit down. 

He and his wife quibbled over whether certain votes would be counted (the problem with write-ins is always the spelling of the name).  I felt good when I asked if he had the results from the other two districts. He did not. I did. He had the election in the bag. He won handily in the other two districts. The genuine pride of Mrs. Phillips when she told Gerry that he had indeed won reminded me why citizens get involved.

Then there are the campaign workers. There was one who called me and e-mailed me several times. She was a Jerry Joseph supporter in North Whitehall. Because she is not a candidate, I won’t mention her name but she knows who she is. She wanted one thing in this election—a fair fight—and she could not understand why in the primary and now in the general election write-in the Jerry Joseph signs kept disappearing. As much as I wanted to say “Don’t worry, voters are too lazy to defeat a guy who is on both ballots with a write-in,” I couldn’t. She and her group had worked so hard and they were seeing the other side play dirty. This was politics.

Joseph won by a wide margin. In fact, I covered three write-in campaigns last night and his was the least competitive. In all three, had the opponent been on the ballot, it would have been closer. That is for sure.

In any event, Jerry’s supporters had to deal with missing signs and threats and all kinds of grief from those supporting his opponent.  But, they learned something and that is citizens can make a difference. Technically, Jerry was the Republican and Democratic nominee. However, he was the North Whitehall for Sustainable Development candidate. NW4SD started as an anti-Walmart group and morphed into a good government force. They will, no doubt, try to wrest control of the township in the next election. 

They are a group of citizens who didn’t like the way things were and they did something about it. That is what America is all about. That is the common thread that ties together Scott Ott, Marc Basist, Gerry Phillips and Jerry Joseph. The questioned the status quo. They took on Goliath. Two Davids won. No Davids really lost.  Heck, we all won.