Although it ain’t over ’til the fat lady sings, she’s warming up. According to the legal ad in the Independent (11-7-2007), the Susquehanna County Board of Elections will meet on November 14th at 9am in the Commissioners’ meeting room to commence the canvasing of absentee ballots received from military and overseas electors. This meeting is open to the public.
Although there is little chance of the outcome of the election being changed by the absentee vote for a write-in for county commissioner, these votes are important and need to be counted. As the race for the second, third and fourth position is as close as it is, there could be a change in those positions as well, but that too is unlikely. Anyway, if your party is second and third in the vote tally do you really care? it’s the number 4 position who would benefit from a move up. Otherwise, it is time to go home.
Assuming the results of the election stay the same, the Republican minority Commissioner, Giangrieco will be in a position known heretofore only to the Democrats - that of being elected as the minority commissioner. Even more interesting, will be seeing the Democrats assuming the leadership roll in this county. Although Commissioner elect Giangrieco has received the most votes, as the minority commissioner he won’t be the chairman unless the Democrats cave in immediately and lose all credibility by doing so.
The Democrat party in Susquehanna County has one chance to prove itself in a leadership position, Let’s see if they will step up to the plate and do so. If not, it may be a very long time again before they have that opportunity.
The Republican party has a lot work to do, primarily in restructuring themselves from the ground up. Although they have roughly a 2 to 1 edge in registered voters, they lack internal leadership. It is a free country, you can’t stop someone from running a separate campaign if they lose a primary. There needs to more cohesiveness in the party. If you lose in the primary, you get behind the winners and support them. We have one example of this, Ray Telnock who did, and three examples, Kelly, Baker and Jurista, who did not. If these three had taken their losses, gone home and supported the endorsed candidates, none of this would have happened.
Fight nicely kids, it’s a long time till the 2011 campaign season.