Down River – October 2, 2014
Sparse Ballot, Quick Night:
The Record just got its first look at the official ballot for the Pennsylvania General Election of Nov. 4 and for the locals it is about as sparse as it can get.
Countywide voters get to finger their little Sheetz-like computer screens for but three races and the choices this time around, numerically speaking, are really, really minimal.
For governor, the ballot reads, “vote for the candidates of one party for governor and lieutenant governor: Tom Corbett, Jim Cawley, Republican; Tom Wolf, Mike Stack, Democratic”
That’s it for that; no independent candidates, no fringe party candidates. We should note that Cawley and Stack, in case you didn’t know, are their respective party candidates for lieutenant governor, that person being the governor’s helper, for want of a better term.
Then we go to representative in congress, 5th district, “vote for one, Glenn GT Thompson Republican; Kerith Strano Taylor Democratic
Yet again, that’s it; no independent candidates, no fringe party candidates.
And finally, we have representative in the general assembly, 76th district, “vote for one, Mike Hanna Democratic
Hanna gets every politician’s dream, a November walkover, as he is about to achieve a record thirteenth term in Harrisburg (with no inclination to stop in the foreseeable future).
These races have low voter turnout written all over them, but let’s hope that’s not the case. Certainly there is a significant difference in the views of incumbent governor and current underdog Tom Corbett and his Democratic challenger Tom Wolf; ditto three-term GOP congressman Glenn Thompson and his challenger Strano Taylor.
The polls show Wolf should unseat Corbett come November and tradition and registration figures show that Thompson should win a fourth term in Washington.
But don’t sell Strano Taylor short. Even some prominent Republicans who attended the Thompson/Strano Taylor Christian Coalition get-together last week came away with favorable comments about Strano Taylor.
She is sharp, well versed on the issues and you can tell she has courtroom experience; her speaking style was outstanding. If a predicted Wolf victory comes to fruition, can his coattails (a very, very old political cliché) help Thompson’s challenger overcome a registration disadvantage in the strongly Republican 5th district?
That’s why we vote. We’ll get the answer early on come the night of Nov. 4. In the meantime make sure you are registered to vote; otherwise don’t complain.
Voter registration deadline is this coming Monday, Oct. 6. Go to the Garden Building and ask to see Maria.
Down to One?
A couple weeks back we touched on not one but two Happy Valley films, one an Al Pacino-orchestrated biopic about the late Penn State football coach Joe Paterno, the other a documentary about the impact of the Jerry Sandusky scandal on the Penn State/ State College community.
It turns out we might be back to just one Happy Valley.
There have been a couple media reports that HBO has stopped production on the Pacino/Brian De Palma vehicle due to budget problems.
But a representative for HBO recently told trade publication Deadline, “We have not killed the project, so to say so would be inaccurate. We have suspended pre-production for a moment to deal with budget issues, but the project is still intact at HBO with the entire creative team as before.”
That quote could very well be media PR speak for “this project is dead.” Anyway, Deadline called the planned film “a hot-button movie, reopening one of the darkest pages in college football history.”
And relative to those dark pages, we still can’t find out if and when the documentary Happy Valley may actually make its way to Happy Valley. That Amir Bar-Lev film has been out for a while and played to glowing reviews at a couple film festivals; but for whatever reason it hasn’t appeared in State College.
We’ll keep trying to find out why.
Renaissance Man of Shintown:
We all need to find a way to get away from the pressure of our daily pursuits, from presidents who play golf (some more than others) to commissioners who play in a rock ‘n roll band.
For Bucktail High School football coach Bruce Ransom, we learned recently, it’s creating cupcakes. Not just any cupcakes but prize-winning entries in the recent Flaming Foliage Festival “cupcake wars.”
The veteran Buck coach, our Farwell moles tell us, knows his way around a kitchen, especially good at stirring up a pot of chicken noodle soup (creating the noodles from scratch). But it’s the Ransom cupcakes that bring home the ribbon.
He used a football motif (no surprise there) to help garner a third place finish from among more than a dozen entries. The Ransom offerings were placed on a football-style plate, these cupcake footballs made as mini-muffins and placed on top of the regular cupcakes, the effect footballs laying in the grass.
