As I mentioned earlier, Tony Allen could potentially petition the courts to order a visual recount of the election results for supervisor in Lancaster Township. Allen, a Republican, appears to have lost by only 11 votes or less than half a percentage point to Ben Bamford, a Democrat. I say “appears to” because there are outstanding provisional, absentee and military ballots to be counted. And we won’t know how those votes will alter the race until next week, at the earliest, when county elections officials do their official count in the township.
Allen seemed pretty sure tonight, though, that he would take it as far as he could to make sure all the votes were counted properly. “It’s so close that I can’t let it go,” he said. “I’ll do whatever’s necessary to be done. We’re counting until we win, and we’re counting on winning.” Obviously, next week’s official canvassing could give Bamford a wider margin of victory, in which case Allen and the Lancaster Township GOP would need to do some serious talking about a challenge. “The whole thing, it’s costly,” he acknowledged. “But if it comes out that I have two or three votes less, then I think it would be prudent to proceed.”
Just in case you missed them in this morning’s print edition, here are a few brainteasers for your Friday evening enjoyment:
1.) And you thought this year’s mayoral race was close? Yes, Democrat Rick Gray won a second term by only 313 votes of the 7,261 cast in the race, or about 4 percentage points. Yes, it was the narrowest margin of victory in a mayoral contest since 1993, when then-Mayor Janice C. Stork fended off Republican Brad S. Fischer by only 255 votes, or 2.2 percentage points. But that’s nothing. The closest race for mayor in Lancaster’s history came in 1898, when Democrat Simon Shissler defeated Republican Samuel Myers. By how many votes did Shissler win?
a. One vote
b. Two votes
c. Five votes
2.) Charlie Smithgall, the Republican who tried unsuccessfully to unseat Gray on Tuesday, had already served two terms as Lancaster mayor, from 1998 through 2005. How many of the city’s 40 mayors since 1818 were elected three or more times?
a. One
b. Three
c. Six
3.) Democrat George Sanderson began a decade-long stint as Lancaster mayor in 1859. How many mayoral elections did he win during that time?
a. None
b. Three
c. Nine
4.) Political analysts predicted that 25 percent of voters would go to the polls in Tuesday’s municipal election. In the race for Lancaster mayor, the most high-profile local race on the ballot, only 7,261, or 19 percent, of the 38,150 city voters cast ballots. Countywide, how many of the 313,654 registered voters went to the polls?
a. 78, 414, or 25 percent
b. 59,820, or 19 percent
c. 43,911, or 14 percent
5.) Smithgall lives on the 500 block of West Lemon Street, in the city’s 9th Ward, 3rd Precinct. Four years ago, he lost to Gray on his home turf by a single vote, 177-176. How did Smithgall fare in his home precinct Tuesday?
a. He beat Gray by a single vote
b. He lost to Gray by 22 votes
c. He tied Gray
6.) Gray lives on the 100 block of North Prince Street, in the city’s 1st Ward. In 2005, Gray beat Smithgall there with 72 percent of the vote. How did the mayor fare on his home turf this year?
a. He won with 51 percent of the vote
b. He lost with only 48 percent
c. He won with 66 percent
7.) The National Rifle Association was supporting Smithgall during the campaign. The group’s lobbying arm reportedly sent a postcard to voters here encouraging them to attend a cannon shoot fundraiser for Smithgall in mid-October. The NRA was targeting Gray because of his membership in Mayors Against Illegal Guns. So how much did the NRA contribute to Smithgall’s campaign, according to his most recent finance report?
Former two-term Mayor Charlie Smithgall picked up 11 votes from provisional ballots, bringing the Republican’s total to 3,485, in the final canvassing of returns completed early this evening. Mayor Rick Gray, a Democrat, picked up five votes from provisional ballots, bringing his total to 3,792, said Mary Stehman, the county’s registrar of elections and chief clerk of the Election Board. So Gray’s margin of victory shrunk to 307 votes and will be reported thusly to the Department of State, Stehman said.
The official count is mandated under state law, and happens beginning every Friday following a primary or election here; officials compare return sheets and count used and unused ballots to verify the original results. Elections workers will begin reviewing votes in contests outside Lancaster City next week, including the 11-vote upset of Lancaster Township Supervisor Tony Allen.
Depending on what the canvassing shows, Allen could potentially petition the court for a recount of Tuesday’s election results, which show voters narrowly ousted the veteran Republican and toppled the GOP’s majority on the three-member board. In all, 2,365 voters cast ballots in the race, meaning Democrat Ben Bamford’s margin of victory was less than half a percentage point.
I spoke with Mike Pickard, a former township supervisor who now chairs the township GOP, on Thursday. He said Allen would not likely seek a court recount before the official canvassing is complete. “The Board of Elections said there could be absentee ballots that have not been scanned yet, military ballots, and provisional ballots,” Pickard said. “When you’re looking at only 11 votes difference, the only official thing I would say is, It’s probably not over.”
If Friday’s recount confirms Bamford’s win, he will join fellow Democrat Kathy Wasong on the board. She was elected to a six-year term in 2005.
There’s no provision at the county or state level that would trigger a recount in the event of an extremely close municipal race. A 2004 law authorizing automatic recounts deals only with races for president, governor and other statewide races.
If Allen petitions the court for a recount, he will be among only a few who have done so — and who were not successful. The three most recent recounts didn’t alter the outcomes in their races.
In 1999, Democrat Bill Saylor petitioned the court for a recount in the county commissioners race. Saylor finished in fourth place, 169 votes behind fellow Democrat Ron Ford, who had won the third and final seat. The recount upheld Ford’s win. In the 1993 election, Democratic City Councilman Eugene Aleci sought a recount after his narrow, 13-vote loss in a re-election bid. The recount confirmed he had lost the race. And in the 1990 primary, Republican William Bash sought a recount of the results that showed him losing the nomination for the city’s seat in the state House to fellow Republican Peter Hahn. The recount confirmed Hahn’s primary victory, although he went on to lose the general election to Democrat Mike Sturla.
Allen, 71, of 13 Parkside Ave., is a retired industrial electrician who is completing his third six-year term as a supervisor, and is currently the board chairman. Bamford is a 45-year-old real estate developer who lives at 1031 Woods Ave.
ON MORE THING: Reports that a write-in candidate unseated Oliver C. Overlander, who was first elected Marietta Mayor in 1981, are unfounded. Ernest E. Lehman, the write-in candidate who was trying to unseat Overlander, said he fell short in his bid by 60 votes, 312-252. Lehman said he was running because he felt some longtime issues in the northwest Lancaster County borough were not being tended to. “It’s time that somebody take a leadership position instead of just talking about them,” Lehman told me.
Former U.S. Rep. Robert S. Walker, of Manheim Township, has announced his support of Tom Corbett for governor, saying Pennsylvania’s attorney general is the Republican with the best chance of “helping our party take back the Governor’s office” and restoring fiscal discipline in Harrisburg. PoliticsPa has Walker’s full statement here. Walker retired from Congress in 1997 after 20 years representing the 16th Congressional District and now heads Wexler & Walker, a Washington, D.C., lobbying firm. He is a frequent guest on political talk shows and is widely credited as being one of the architects of the Republican revolution in 1994, when voters sent Democrats packing and gave control of the House back to the GOP.
AMVETS Post 19 will hold its annual “Meet the Candidates” night on Sunday, Oct. 18. If you’re not familiar with this event, it’s become a staple of the local political scene since its founder, the late Harold Sommers, launched it back in 1996. This year’s event will be held from 5 to 9 p.m. As usual, it is free and open to the public. AMVETS Post 19 is at 715 Fairview Ave. in the city’s Cabbage Hill neighborhood.
Spending and tax bills approved by the Republican-controlled Senate earlier today are on their way to the House, where Democrats are threatening to strip $12 million in what they believe are discretionary grants from the $27.8 billion plan and quickly send it back to the Senate. Senate Republicans, meantime, say those $12 million in line items aren’t WAMs, short for “walking around money,” short for “discretionary grants.”
Erik Arneson, a spokesman for Senate Republicans, sent the following memo around this morning:
There are no “WAMs” in the spending plan approved by the Senate today with overwhelming bipartisan support (Senate Bill 1085, which passed 43 to 6). It was made perfectly clear at this morning’s meeting of legislative leaders that any funding decisions necessary to implement the 2009-10 state budget contained in SB 1085 will be made exclusively by the Rendell administration. In fact, the governor’s chief of staff directly said, “There are no WAMs in this budget.” That includes all of the line items which House Democratic leaders claim are “WAMs.”
It is beyond comprehension that House Democratic leaders want to cut funding for health care clinics, acute care hospitals, the Safe Neighborhoods program, the Violence Reduction program, and the Minority Business Development program. At the same time they are proposing these cuts, they are proposing to increase House legislative accounts by $11 million. So the House is proposing to cut funding for health clinics, acute care hospitals, and the Safe Neighborhoods program in order to spend that money on themselves. The House should take up SB 1085 promptly and end this budget impasse.
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh will give “A Report from Washington” at Franklin & Marshall College on Thursday, Oct. 29, at 7:30 p.m. The event, which is free and open to the public, will be held at F&M’s Barshinger Center for the Musical Arts in Hensel Hall. It is co-sponsored by the Center for Liberal Arts & Society, the Government Department, the Philadelphia Alumni Writers House and the Weinstein Lecture Fund.
Hersh was a reporter for the New York Times from 1972-79 and has been a freelance writer since. He has been a regular contributor to The New Yorker since 1993. Hersh’s journalism and publishing awards include a Pulitzer Prize for his exposure of the My Lai massacre and cover up during the Vietnam War, five George Polk Awards, two National Magazine Awards, and more than a dozen other prizes for investigative reporting. He has published eight books including, most recently, Chain of Command, which as based on his reporting on Abu Ghraib for The New Yorker. His book prizes include the 1983 National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times award for biography, and a Sidney Hillman Foundation award for The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House.
Rep. John C. Bear, a Lititz Republican, scheduled a rally in support of a bill that would end project labor agreements in Pennsylvania, contracts he says reward unions with large contracts and drive up the cost of taxpayer-funded projects.
The local trade unions found out about it. They drowned out the lawmaker’s supporters with chants of “Bear’s gotta go, Bear’s gotta go.”
Former U.S. Rep. Robert S. Walker, of Manheim Township, has announced his support of Tom Corbett for governor, saying Pennsylvania’s attorney general is the Republican with the best chance of “helping our party take back the Governor’s office” and restoring fiscal discipline in Harrisburg. PoliticsPa has Walker’s full statement 
