Down River – Nov. 12, 2015
Change Is a Constant:
As noted here in an earlier column, if we don’t have national media polls to tell us who’s ahead, we don’t have much to go on when trying to figure what will shake down when we go to the local polls.
That happened a week ago this past Tuesday, Pennsylvania’s municipal election of Nov. 3, 2015. People who pay attention to these political things weren’t real sure how Clinton County’s contested contests would play out.
So now that we’ve had a week or so to try and make some sense of the results, we come to the conclusion that Clinton County voters are not at all reluctant to split votes, to pick the candidates of their choice regardless of the political affiliation of those candidates.
How else can you explain that, in a county evenly split between Republicans and Democrats, we had Democrats win handily for district attorney and sheriff and a Republican with a decisive win for register and recorder? Plus two GOP-ers retaining their commissionerships?
Were there any shockers? Political types with whom we talked weren’t sure going in about the third spot for Clinton County Commissioner. While incumbent Joel Long finished ahead of Paul Conklin in the spring Democratic primary, once Republican and independent voters moved into the November fray, Conklin moved ahead of Long, taking that third commissioner seat by a fairly comfortable 346 votes (The official tally from this week had Conklin with 3,328 votes, Long with 2,982).
In retrospect there was no surprise that Pete Smeltz came out on top in the overall tally with 4,224 votes. Fellow Republican Jeff Snyder was a fairly distant second with 3,395 votes. Four years ago they were neck-and-neck (more on that down below). This time around Snyder was out in front on the change-over in the administration at the Clinton County Prison and likely took some voter hits as the front-man for that change, even as he noted all prison board members unanimously gave their approval.
Computers being the wonderful things they sometimes are, Down River was able to go back and look at earlier commissioner races; if you’re looking for a trend of any kind, they show a descent downward for commissioner Long. Let’s hop in the Down River Way-Back Machine, starting in the spring of 2007 which saw a major round of political carnage:
Two county commissioners were drummed out in May of ‘07. On the Democratic side incumbent Rich Kyle finished third in a three-way scrum. Long and Coleman, both of whom had failed in a bid for county government back in 2003, were successful this time. Coleman finished on top with 2,078 votes to Long’s 2,058, Kyle a distant third with 1,308.
Harold C. “Bud” Yost, incumbent Republican commissioner, ended up third in the GOP primary. Then-board chairman Tom Bossert came out on top with 1,814 votes, Dan Harger (a government study change proponent at the time) was second with 1,425 votes, Yost out of the money with 1,306. Retired state police officer Martin Salinas was last with 1,088.
In November of 2007 the Democrats Long and Coleman took control (so to speak) of the Garden Building. Long, a 10-year Lock Haven city councilman at the time, was the top vote-getter with 4,203 votes; Bossert second with 3,830 votes and Coleman third with 3,666. Harger finished fourth with 3,146 votes.
As a sidebar here, Harger was obviously hurt by his 2007 support for a proposed change in the form of county government. That question was on the ballot in November of 2007 and voters said “no” to the tune 5,965 to 1,795. (Dan, if it’s any consolation, you were on the right side of that issue, as was Down River, but more than a few voters obviously felt otherwise; they were wrong, you were right).
2011 saw more turn-over in the commissioners’ suites in the third floor of the Garden Building. Smeltz and Snyder, running as a team, moved in and Coleman checked out.
That November of 2011 was a wild one, we all recall, the normal four candidate field expanded to (count ‘em) six.
We had Smeltz and Snyder, Long and Coleman, plus Brit-turned-American- turned-Republican- turned-independent (and the last time we checked a Democrat) Richard Morris along with eleventh-hour write-in candidate Les Robinson.
When the votes were in Smeltz was on top with 3,888 votes, Snyder next with 3,842, Long, the top vote-getter in 2007, making the cut with 2,724. Morris was next with 1,723, then Coleman with 969. Robinson was well back in the pack, polling something in the neighborhood of 172 write-in votes.
That had been the time when Coleman became ensnared in a criminal matter involving a theft at the Lock Haven YMCA. He had been hit with a related third degree felony charge of theft and was later found not guilty at trial. But that trial came well after the election. So here we are, eight years after Long and Coleman were elected to office; now both are gone from county government.
County voters decided to give Smeltz and Snyder four more years and newcomer Paul Conklin his first 4-year term. We agree that government, as Pete and Jeff like to say, works best at the local level. We believe the newly comprised county board, come the first of the new year, will work well together and do their best for the county. We wish them well.
