6th District get together

The Luzerne County 6th District Republican Committee has an end of the year party tomorrow. This should be the kickoff event of the 2013 local elections.

There are 4 seats on the Wilkes-Barre Area School Board up for election  next year and candidates can cross file so this would be a good event for any prospective Republican or Democratic hopeful to attend.

County wide there are 5 spots up on the County Council with 2 Republican incumbents and Controller Walter Griffith is running for reelection.  Plains Township will be electing 2 Commissioners.

Details on the Facebook page

6TH DISTRICT REPUBLICAN END OF YEAR HO-HO-HOLIDAY SOCIAL !

Enjoy Holiday music and a good home cooked meal ! ! !

When: Sunday, December 30, 2012
Where: Wilkes-Barre Twp. Fire Hall
150 Watson St., Wilkes-Barre Twp., PA.
Time: 4pm-7pm


 

New Luzerne County GOP chairman

In a bit of a surprise Kingston attorney Bill Urbanski was elected as Luzerne County Republican chairman defeating incumbent Terry Casey 79-72 at the party convention Sunday at Genetti's.


Casey was elected in 2008 succeeding Lynette Vilano. and it's fair to say that his record has been more hits than misses. In 2007 the Luzerne County Republicans lost EVERY contested county election. Their only winner that year was Steve Urban because one Republican had to be on the board of commissioners. His first move was hiring Renita Fennick as executive director who was able to deal with the various factions and got people to work together. A year round headquarters was opened in downtown Wilkes-Barre with space donated by a real estate outfit and he got the back mountain money boys to kick in some bucks to pay for it all. It paid off in the 2009 county elections when the Republicans won 2 out 3 of the Row Offices up that year. In 2010 the focus was getting Lou Barletta elected to Congress that was helped by the national wave.

Elections for the county council under the new Home Rule form of government was on the ballot in 2011 and the Republicans snagged 4 of the 11 seats and Stefanie Salavatis knocked off DA JAckie Mo. Not bad for a party that has been on the outside for a long time with a significant deficit in registrations.

 But some Republicans said they should have done better after all the corruption that has seen a slew of Democrats go to jail. Some have complained that the county party didn't help out municipal candidates enough particularly in Wilkes-Barre but that is not the focus of the county party.

The county Republicans haven't been able to fill all of the committee spots and got a big black eye when a race hater wrote himself in for one of them.One of my Republican friends said it was not a priority to recruit county committee members but 6th District honcho James O'Meara said he tried his best to get people to sign up without much success.

Bill Urbanski sounds like a Republican populist if there is such a thing CV: "My vision is simple: do away with unnecessary expenditures and bureaucracies and build a more inclusive county Republican Party," Urbanski said. "Too often committee members and even average voters feel as though they are on the outside looking in, or what may be worse, on the bottom looking up. In my mind, the contributions made by the rank-and-file members of the GOP are just as important as the contributions made by those in positions of power."

It looks like Kingston Mayor Jim Haggerty is the next coming of Marty Murray on the Republican side. He wrote the Home Rule Charter and now this.  "Winning the Republican county election is proof of your grassroots ability," Haggerty said.

Bill's brother posted this picture  :

Update: James O'Meara corrects me in the comments..

Actually, Gort, this year we were successful in the 6th getting new committee members. We have filled 8 of 10 slots in Plains, for example, and I will find people for the other two slots. It was similar throughout the rest of the 6th District. Recruiting those slots is a primary duty of a District Chair, so the empty slots ...and the responsibility to fill them ...are my responsibility.

Reaction to White supremacist wins write-in for Luzerne County GOP Committee

CV: Bob Kolankoski, chairman of the committee's third district, says it's being blown way out of proportion.

"Anyone can be written in," Kolankoski said. "He's a crackpot. He's one guy. What can he do?"

TL:  Luzerne County GOP Chaiman Terry Casey said Friday he was unaware of Smith’s background and does not know what the party’s position will be until he discusses it with the executive committee.

“I don’t think the party ever faced this kind of situation before. It will be a matter for the executive committee and the committee people to decide,” he said.

Casey said, even if the executive committee decided it wanted to remove Smith, he does not know if it would have the power to do so because he was elected to the position

STATEMENT OF THE LUZERNE COUNTY DEMOCRATIC COMMITTEE ON THE ELECTION OF STEVE SMITH:

Much news has been made today regarding the election of Steve Smith to the Luzerne County Republican Committee.

Committee members can be influential in local politics, and you can quickly rise up the ranks to sit on an Executive Committee of either party, which frequently can put you in the same room with  State Senators and Representatives, District Attorneys, local Mayors, party nominees, movers and shakers, even members of Congress. Steve's Smith's expedited path to access Republican officials is quite disturbing.

However, it is really not the fault of the Republican Committee that he was elected. Without a candidate listed on the ballot who had gone through the petition process, write in candidates for committee offices only need a minimal amount of support to win. He got three votes: Steve Smith obviously does not represent the Luzerne County Republican Party in any way, shape, or form.

I'm sure we have all read Steve Smith's letters to the editor in local papers, filled with pure hate, against anyone who doesn't fit into his world view. In fact, I find find his views abhorrent on a very deep and personal level. As far as I can tell, I don't believe there is a mechanism for removing a committee person from either party from their position, as they were voted on by the public and those results certified by the election board. However, there are ways to minimize him over the course of his term, so that his election will have a negligible impact. We sincerely hope that the Republicans find a way to quarantine any political ambitions Steve Smith may have. No white supremacist should be anywhere near the inner workings of any party in Luzerne County.

The Democrats have no intention to bring Steve Smith up again because, frankly, his election isn't merely a political embarrassment for the Republicans, it's an embarrassment for the entire county. Speaking about Steve Smith not only distracts us from real issues, it legitimizes him and gives him more attention (something I'm sure he craves), and frankly he is making other Republican committee persons across Luzerne County who work hard and care about their country and their communities look bad.

We would rather speak on jobs and the economy, social justice and equal rights, and an America where everyone has a fair shot to succeed. 

So, don't give Steve Smith what he wants: this will be our first, last, and only word on the subject.

Casey Evans

Spokesperson for the Luzerne County Democratic Committee

Chairman, 2nd District

Mr. Smith defends himself.

Smith said Friday said he decided to seek the committee position after he saw there were no candidates for the post, and he would fight any effort to remove him.

“I’m community-minded and wanted to get my foot in the door,” ....“This is not a powerful position. I don’t know why everyone is getting their panties in a bunch,” ....“Everybody has a past. I made mistakes. You learn from your mistakes and move on,” he said.

The headline flying around the lefty blogs implies that this guy won an election in our little corner of the world. He did no such thing. He wrote himself in for an office nobody else was contesting and got exactly 1 vote, his own. Luzerne County maybe the most corrupt place in the country but we don't elect racist in contested elections.





Looking at the list of winners for the county Republican Committee on the Luzerne County website there are a lot of blank spaces. PoliticsPA observed It’s a cautionary tale for every county committee: fill those vacant committee seats, or others will fill them for you.






A local GOP insider told me There was no concentrated effort to fill vacant committee spots.... at the last exec meeting a couple weeks ago we didn't even know who won the open spots.

White supremacist wins write-in for Luzerne County GOP Committee

This is making national news but it's not what it appears to be.

Think Progress:  Republicans in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania have elected Steve Smith, a lifelong white supremacist with close ties to neo-Nazi groups and groups like Aryan Nations, to the county’s GOP Committee.

HATEWATCH has more on his background:
Recruited into the neo-Nazi movement while he was stationed at Fort Bragg in the 1990s, Smith, of Pittston, Penn., has been active in an extraordinary array of white nationalist, skinhead, and neo-Nazi groups, including American Third Position, Keystone United (formerly Keystone State Skinheads), and the Council of Conservative Citizens. He is a former Aryan Nations member and former leader of the Philadelphia chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of White People, which was created by former Klan leader David Duke but is no longer associated with him. Smith also belongs to a Pennsylvania-based group called the European American Action Coalition (EAAC), which according to its website was formed in fall 2011 “by a few well known White activists in the great and historic state of Pennsylvania.”


He has had letters to the editor published in the local newspapers and was convicted in 2003 of ' beating up Antoni Williams, a black man, using stones and chunks of pavement. Smith pleaded guilty to terrorist threats and ethnic intimidation and received a 60-day sentence and probation.'

Now for what TP and SPLC didn't cover in this story.

Steve Smith didn't appear on the primary ballot and there were only 3 write-in votes for Republican committeeman in Ward 4 of Pittston according to the election results posted on the Luzerne County website. 2 slots are allotted to that ward and another person won the other one. As far as I can tell he wrote himself in and won the election because of apathy. I talked to a few of my Republican friends tonight and they are appalled that this has happened denying any knowledge of this person. They wouldn't go on the record telling me any official statement should come from County Chairman Terry Casey.

Bloggers are reluctant and accidental Committeemen

In the 2010 primary election DB Echo of Another Monkey was elected as a Luzerne County Democratic Committeeman from Nanticoke. By his own admission he was "written in by a friend as a joke and won."  To his credit he has taken his responsibilities as an officer of the party seriously going to as many meetings that he can make. He even keeps local Bloggers informed of the activities of the outfit even if the Chair is apprehensive about letting Bloggers know what is going on.

Now the Blogfather may become a Republican Committeeman in Wilkes-Barre.He got a vote or 2 but so did someone else.

GOP committee races to be decided

Most, if not all, ties occurred because no candidates filed paperwork to get their names on the ballot. Voters wrote in names on the electronic voting machines, prompting multiple people to receive the same number of votes, in some cases one vote each....The election office will choose winners using numbered balls shaken in a container. Balls will be picked for candidates who don’t appear.

He looked at mounting a serious campaign after being encouraged  but got sidetracked because of the loss of a family member. He has never been high on the local Republican Party saying  I took my unexpected call to join the local GOP scrum as the equivalent of being General George Armstrong Custer's replacement bugler during that final gallop into history. Sad, but blatantly honest on my part. 

If he does win the ping pong ball selection and follows through he will be as welcomed at a 6th District Republican Committee meeting like ants at a picnic. 

A few years ago some people wanted me to run for Democratic Committeeman in my little corner of Plains Twp. to replace  the invisible man, a guy that lives a block away but never met. I took a pass because of my work schedule and blogging activities. I'm glad I did because now my committee guy is Thom Shibula .He also was elected to the state committee and will be a delegate to the DNC in Charlotte. Thom does the work of an old fashion  local precinct captain like dropping off yard signs at my house. I haven't heard if he could deliver a ton of coal.