Gerhard’s quest shows a write-in’s hurdles

When Carbon County Commissioner Tom Gerhard of Weatherly lost the Republican nomination in the spring primaries, most party faithful expected him to go quietly and work for the two candidates who did win.

But that certainly did not happen. Believing that he had a groundswell of support remaining in his own party and figuring that he could count on some Democrats to give him a helping hand, Gerhard mounted a write-in campaign that initially muddied the waters of the general election.

While Gerhard snared 2,721 write-in votes, which is certainly a respectable number, it fell far short of third place Lehighton Democrat Rocky Ahner’s 5,103 total. It was also significantly lower than the 4,358 votes that Democrat Bob Jacobs of Palmerton received to finish in fourth place.

The fear that Gerhard’s efforts might cost the Republicans control of the commissioners’ office never materialized, as the GOP steamrollered Democrats to take every contested row office in Carbon.

Republican Commissioners’ Chairman Wayne Nothstein of Lehighton was the top vote-getter, followed by newcomer Republican Chris Lukasevich of Jim Thorpe. They had 7,127 and 6,282 votes, respectively.

Gerald Strubinger of Jim Thorpe was in the race as a nonpartisan but turned out to be neither spoiler nor major factor as he picked up 1,126 votes.

Structurally, voting for county commissioners in Pennsylvania is an oddity. To ensure (or try to ensure) minority representation on the three-member board, each major party nominates two candidates in the primaries. In the general election, the top three vote-getters are elected. The other part of the oddity is that voters can vote for no more than two candidates. One might think that since there are three seats at stake, a voter could vote for up to three candidates as is the case for other offices, but that’s not the way it works.

Hypothetically, if Gerhard had gotten enough write-in votes to beat Democrat Ahner for the third spot, as he was hoping, the Republicans would have claimed all three seats.

This would not have been unprecedented. Incredibly, it has happened in three election cycles in a row, including this year in heavily Republican Tioga County (population 41,000) in north-central Pennsylvania. Republican Roger Bunn, who lost in this year’s primary, waged a successful write-in campaign to become the third county commissioner joining fellow Republicans Mark Hamilton and Erick Coolidge for a third term in a row with the same board.

Bunn first gained a seat on the board in 2011, also on a write-in campaign. In this year’s general election, Bunn received 2,494 write-ins compared to 5,407 for Hamilton and 5,106 for Coolidge. This was enough to defeat the two Democratic ballot candidates, Carolyn Ruth with 1,970 votes, and Ann Marie Nasek with 1,669.

In 2015, it was Hamilton who won by the write-in route after being beaten out by his two colleagues in the Republican primary.

Write-in winners are much more common on the local level where just a few of these types of votes can carry a candidate to victory. Organizing countywide or statewide write-in campaigns take herculean efforts, and they are, on occasion, successful.

Scott Wagner, the wealthy York County businessman who challenged Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf’s re-election bid last year but lost, was elected to the state Senate in a March 2014 special election as an anti-establishment Republican write-in candidate. He defeated endorsed Republican nominee Ron Miller and Democrat Linda Small, both of whom were on the ballot.

Running a successful countywide or statewide write-in campaign ranks somewhere between visiting Alice in Wonderland and figuring out the riddle of the Sphinx. The American dream still may hold that anyone can be elected to public office, but write-in candidates are almost always relegated to the scrap heap of history in this era of big-money politics.

Although Gerhard gave it his all, spent a lot of money and had high hopes, he, along with many predecessors, learned the hard lesson that only once in a blue moon will lightning strike, and that for every write-in campaigner who wins, there are thousands who are unsuccessful.

By Bruce Frassinelli | tneditor@tnonline.com