The judges

We have 2 new members of the Court of Common Pleas in Luzerne County. Bill Amesbury won both party nominations in May and Tina Gartley came in second on the Democratic side virtually ensuring their election in the fall. Yet another reason to get rid of cross filing in judicial and school board races in the primary when the fewest people vote. That is not a shot at Gartley or Amesbury as I think they are good people. It is a shot at the Wilkes-Barre Area School Directors who recently selected an accused criminal as Board President but that is another subject.


I will give props to our esteemed jurists for selecting the only Republican on the bench, Tom Burke, as the new President Judge. Burke just won his retention vote despite my urging of a no vote on him and PPO-2 on principle. My lawyer friends tell me he is one of the best people on the bench and will hopefully continue the efforts of Chet Muroski to clean up the mess. I still find it hard to believe that these guys didn't know what was going on in Ciavarella's courtroom. Muroski says he went to FBI about the shenanigans going on in the courthouse but Ann Lokuta was the only one to put it in writing. For her efforts Michael Conahan orchestrated a campaign to remove her from the bench that the Court of Judicial Discipline has upheld in an apparent case of CYA.

Judge of the Court of Common Pleas

William H. Amesbury (Dem/Rep). . 37,125 36%


Tina Polachek Gartley (Dem) . . . . 35,482 35%


Richard Hughes (Rep). . . . . . . 30,154 29%


WITH 188 OF 189 PRECINCTS COUNTED

Exit polls

We voted about 6PM tonight and were voters 373 & 374 out of approximately 1000. Wilkes -Barre School Board candidate was greeting people out front and he was the only School Director hopeful that I voted for. Me and Mrs. G also wrote in David Yonki for Jury Commissioner.

Our side polls are now closed and the result that jumps out is the retention questions.

Peter Paul Olszewski Jr Yes 21 14%-No 136 86%

Tom Burke Yes 83 50%-No 83 50%


Of course this is an unscientific sampling of readers of Gort42 done for our amusement but couple this with what I've been hearing and it looks like PPO-2 is going down and Burke will hold on.

The Controller final has

Walter Griffith (R) 80 54%

Wil Toole (I) 44 30%

Bob Morgan 22 16%

Our next Judge

Dick Hughes (R) 90 49%

Tina Gartley (D) 55 30%

Bill Amesbury (D) 35 21%

Predictions-The Judges

In the retention races I think that Peter Paul Olszewski Jr. is going down. Tom Burke may survive but I doubt it.

Tina Gartley will be the top vote getter for one of the two open seats and Dick Hughes will win the other spot. Bill Amesbury is also a very well qualified candidate but this is the first time in my memory that having both nominations may not help.

Luzerne County Judges

The headline election this year is the election of 2 new Judges for the Court of Common Pleas. After the revelations that the Juvie brothers, Michael Conahan and Mark Ciavarella, have taken public corruption to a level unseen anywhere in history of this country the choice is especially important. Taking a bribe to fix a case seems almost pedestrian (they did that too) but designing a scheme to conspire to build a private juvenile penal colony then railroading children through the court system to ensure the place makes money is beyond corrupt, it is evil. And they had lot's of help.


17 candidates ran in the primary and now we have the choice of 3 very qualified people to fill the 2 open seats. Wilkes-Barre district judge Bill Amesbury won both nominations which in past years would assure his election because his name would appear twice on the old lever machine ballots but with the new touch screens he will only be listed once. Tina Gartley has been running the most energetic campaign and has been all over the place and her online outreach has been impressive, I think John Dawe knows how to work the intertubes. Republican Dick Hughes has solid support from the local GOP and many Democrats and independents that I talk to also like him.

My prediction is that Gartley will be top vote getter with Amesbury and Hughes fighting it out for the second spot. Some Hughes supporters are urging a bullet vote for him. A bullet vote is casting a vote for just one candidate when you are allowed to vote for more than one. In this case you can vote for two.


You can cast a bullet vote in the Gort42 poll on the sidebar.

The Mericle of money

Multi-party Bob Mericle was named as Participant number 2 in the Juvie Brothers bribery scandal that hit the news last January and in August he was charged with being part of it.

He is going to skate.

That hasn't prevented him from greasing the wheels this year as he has always done.

The Pennsylvania Department of State’s Campaign Finance website lists the money Mericle has been spreading around just this year. It's an old habit with Bob.

March 17th he gave $500 to State Rep John Yudichak

May 27th $10,000.00 to State Senator Ray Musto

On July 1st Mike Carroll recieved $2500 from Bob.


The kicker is his May 24th contribution to Bill Amesbury, Luzerne County Judge candidate, on May 24th of $500.

Update: Mericle donated $100 to Democratic Prothonotary candidate Nancy Bellas on April 9th

Where are the local Democrats?

The Luzerne County Republican Party and Row office nominees have had a bunch of high profile get togethers, media events and fund raisers since the the May Primary but I've hardly heard a peep out of the Democratic row officer candidates.

Democratic Judge candidate Bill Amesbury has been on the hustings and Tina Gartley has a slew of events listed on her website. Republican Dick Hughes is also working hard. I have bumped into Judge Thomas Burke (R), who is up for retention, in a few places and I have yet to hear anyone say a bad thing about him. As far as I know he is not even raising money. The other judge up for retention, Peter Paul Olszewski Jr., knows that he is in trouble and has an event this week. Via PittstonPolitics.com PPO-2 will host a retention rally this Thursday, Oct 1 at 7PM. It will be held at the Red Mil Tavern in Pittston.

It looks like the Judicial candidates are running their campaigns independently of the county Democratic Party. That is probably a good stratergy.

Back to the row officer races.

Long time Register of Wills Dottie Stankovic is up against Republican Gina Nevenglosky. I always liked Dottie because she wouldn't always play ball with the powers that be. Her best endorsement came from former county Democratic Chairman Joe Mazur who was "gleeful" that Steve Flood lost the Controller nomination to Maryanne Petrilla in 2005. He said that "She and certain other people have been a cancer within the organization."
I haven't been to any Polka festivals lately so I haven't seen Dottie. Gina has scheduled an event at the courthouse on Saturday October 10, 2009 at 1:00PM.

Republican Carolee Medico Olenginski is looking to return to the office of Prothonotary after being defeated twice by the disgraced Jill Moran. Carolee has been everywhere since the primary and I still predict that she will win in a walk. Nurse Nancy Bellas won the Democratic nomination in May and hasn't been heard from since.


In the Controllers race Bob Morgan surfaced today to complain about a math error on Walter Griffith' s campaign finance report. Morgan was the only Democratic candidate for Controller in the primary which I thought was kind of weird for an open seat. Take a look at Morgan's report and you will see some familiar names. This is the first times in months that I have read Morgan's name in the papers or anywhere else. Griffith has been everywhere asking people for their vote.

Regular commenter Will Toole, the Independent candidate, has been pressing the flesh, working the blogs and writing letters to the editor. His latest missive in the CV asks the same question I have been asking the last few years.

Why hasn't casino gambling reduced property taxes?

I'm sure (hope) that our Democratic candidates will be more visible in the next few weeks before the election. If they think that they can rely on the registration edge to carry them to victory they are in for a big surprise. You still have to ask people for their vote and in this toxic atmosphere that may not be enough.

GOP Kickoff

From the inbox:

Judge Joan Orie Melvin, Republican candidate for Pennsylvania Supreme Court, will join Luzerne County Republican candidates at 2 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 15, as they unveil the party’s unified campaign.

The press conference will be held at the county GOP’s newly opened permanent headquarters, 41 S. Main St., Suite 14, in downtown Wilkes-Barre.

The Republican candidates will outline their campaign for the remaining seven weeks as they work to bring honesty, ethics, accountability, reform and transparency to the Luzerne County Courthouse.

Republicans on the ballot include Richard Hughes, Court of Common Pleas; Walter L. Griffith Jr., Controller; Carolee Medico Olenginski, Prothonotary; Gina Nevenglosky, Register of Wills/Clerk of the Orphan’s Court; and Frank Semanski, Jury Commissioner. Democrat William Amesbury is the other judicial nominee on the Republican ballot.


The event is open to the public.

This is nifty

Luzerne County candidate for Judge of the Court of the Common Pleas Dick Hughes is hosting a whitewater rafting trip on the Lehigh River on Saturday, September 19, 2009. The details are on Facebook but not on his website. Get on the stick guys. I think this is one of the most creative fundraising ideas I have ever heard of. I'll be watching college football that day so I can't make it but maybe Kayak Dude and the Blogfather will join in. They are fond of water sports.

Now that we are past Labor Day the other local candidates have some events scheduled.

GOP Controller candidate Walter Griffith has a shindig scheduled for Friday, September 18th in Wilkes-Barre. The details are on his website.

Judicial candidate Tina Gartley has a full slate of events including celebrations of grandparents, beer and polka plus she likes college football. She has an events page on her site.

Double nominee for Judge Bill Amesbury has had some get togethers that nobody bothered to tell me about ahead of time.

The Democratic row officer candidates are out there also but they don't have websites so I'm not sure what they are up to.

I usually don't watch the local newscasts (car hits tree, house burns down) but I will start tuning in for the political commercials. I await the ads that say we should retain Judges Peter Paul Olszewski Jr. and Thomas F. Burke Jr. I have never voted to retain a Judge because I'm a political junkie and I want to see another election and I think that retention elections are BS. Many of my friends have urged me to vote Yes on Burke but nobody has defended PPO-2.

Looking to the fall

Luzerne County Judge

I think it's safe to say that Bill Amesbury will be the top vote getter for 1 of the 2 seats up for grabs by virtue of his nomination on both sides of the ballot. So the race is between Republican nominee Dick Hughes and Democrat Tina Gartley. Hughes has rock solid support on the GOP side and has broad appeal throughout the county. Even a trendy lefty like Carl Romanelli backs him. It still will be hard for him to overcome Gartley's advantages such as snagging the Democratic nomination in a county that has almost a 2 to 1 edge in Democratic registration and the feeling that there should be a woman on the Court of Common Pleas. About the only thing that can sink her is if she or a member of her family is tied to the Juvie Brothers.


Register of Wills


Two woman are vieing for this row office in the year of the woman. Dottie Stankovic has always been independent of the the local Democratic Party but the disgust with the local Dems just might make this a close race. The Republican nominee is Gina Nevenglosky

Prothonotary

This is another match up of 2 female candidates. Former GOP Prothonotary Carolee Medico-Olenginski romped to victory in the primary and will probably cruise to an easy win over first time candidate Democrat Nancy Bellas. Carolee back in the Courthouse, this will be fun.

Controller

Long time pain in the ass Walter Griffith won the Repubublican nomination and will face off with Bob Morgan in the fall. I think that Walter has been a "pain" in a good way like Steve Flood was when he was Controller. Let's just hope that he ignores nasty blog posts about him and stays out of the fray.

Wilkes-Barre Area School Director

Christine Katsock was the top vote getter on both sides of the ballot and should finally get elected to something. I haven't checked but people tell me she changed her registration to "D". Either way I'm voting for her. The only incumbent to hold on was Lynn Evans which is not surprising in this enviroment of investigations and indictments. Harry Haas won a spot on the GOP side and it looks like he will competing with former W-B Councilman Phil Latinski.

My view


Vote Repubublican in Luzerne County

Enough is enough. Throw the rascals out.

Amesbury hits a double

Wilkes-Barre Magistrate Bill Amesbury was the top vote getter on the Democratic ballot for Luzerne County Judge and came in 2nd on the GOP side virtually assuring he will be hanging out on the 3rd floor of the Courthouse next January. To the surprise of many (not me)Tina Gartley grabbed the other Democratic nomination. To the surprise of no one Dick Hughes was the top vote getter on the Republican side.

The race was remarkably free of rancor and most of the candidates stayed positive. The only exception was Dan Zola's robocalls and sensational direct mail pieces.


Complete Luzerne County returns are on the county website. Once again Leonard and his staff have done a great job.