Pike County Sample Ballots availible

You can review the sample ballots now:

1. Start with the Pike County homepage (http://www.pikepa.org/)
2. Click the "elections" link on the right side of the page, in the "County Departments" section.
3. You should have all the sample ballots for Pike County listed on the screen. Select the voting district (for instance: "Porter Township") from the correct column (Democrat or Republican) and see how the ballot will look!

Please take a look at this before you go to the polls on Tuesday, May 18, 2010

What you see is less than what you got?

The National Review Online finds what looks like a newspaper headline in Sestak's new ad to be a letter to the editor by a Sestak supporter. Jim Geraghty writes:

(Sestak's ad is) "...mostly a standard-issue biographical ad, with a bit of Top Gun–style footage of a younger Sestak on an aircraft carrier."

But the ad features a newspaper headline, "Sestak Works Hard to Create New Jobs." For an aspiring senator in this economic environment, that's about as good a headline as you can wish for, and I wondered which newspaper wrote that.

It turns out it's the headline on a letter to the editor in the Delaware County Daily Times; the letter writer shares the name of the chief attorney in the Philadelphia office of the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights.

Sestak gets challenger kicked off Primary ballot

From POLITICS PA:

UPDATED: Sestak knocks Vod Varka off ballot

By Alex Roarty
PoliticsPA Staff Writer
roarty@polilticspa.com

Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Joe Vod Varka on Tuesday was kicked off the May 18 primary ballot after a petition challenge from fellow Democrat Joe Sestak, a move that could help the former Navy admiral defeat incumbent Arlen Specter but also leave him vulnerable to criticism over the hardball tactic.

A Commonwealth Court judge ruled that Vod Varka’s petition contained fewer than the 2,000 valid-signature threshold necessary for ballot placement, meaning a write-in campaign is his only option left.

Vod Varka’s campaign had been almost completely off the radar until he unexpectedly filed enough signatures, at the time at least, to be placed on the ballot. The Western Pennsylvania native’s platform consisted mostly of conservative ideas, such as lowering government spending and ending gun control laws, and he had drawn support from some “Tea Party” groups.

Although he was unlikely to receive more than a tiny slice of the total votes cast, Vod Varka’s removal from the ballot could help Sestak win a greater share of voters bent on voting out Specter.

But Sestak might also have opened himself up to criticism because his own campaign against Specter was built on the premise that Democratic voters deserved a choice in the primary. The Specter campaign had already called Sestak’s challenge “a vivid example of old style back-room politics as usual.”

UPDATE: Sestak attorney Manly Parks defended the petition challenge, saying the minimum-signature law was in place to make sure candidates who appeared on the ballot had sufficient support.

“We certainly believe it’s entirely appropriate and fair that every candidate demonstrate that they reach that threshold,” he told PoliticsPA. “Otherwise, you’re just creating exceptions for people not to have to comply with the elction code.”

Still, the Specter campaign criticized Sestak for Vod Varka’s removal and once again took aim at his staffers’ salaries, which has been one of the incumbent’s favorite issues this campaign.

“The people, specifically Democratic Primary voters, should have decided whether Mr. Vodvarka was worthy of support, not Joe Sestak and the court system,” said Specter camapign manager Chris Nicholas in a statement. “And Cong. Sestak was happy to pay big bucks to his lawyers to knock a regular guy like Joe Vodvarka off the ballot, but he’s not willing to pay the minimum wage to his own campaign employees.”

First ad is out in the PA Senate Primary

See the ad on YouTube.

From this morning's Morning Call:

U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter ended an advertising standstill with his Democratic primary opponent, U.S. Rep. Joe Sestak, with a television ad featuring four former Bethlehem Steel workers.

Specter premiered the first TV ad of the 2010 Senate race on his campaign's Web site late Tuesday night. It's expected to be telecast in select media markets today.

The ad shows four men sitting around a table reminiscing about their steelworking days. When the plant shut down, they no longer qualified for their pension plans. Specter, they say, won back the pensions for 100 steelworkers.

''If Arlen Specter could do this for us, imagine what he can do for the rest of the downtrodden and mistreated workers in Pennsylvania,'' Joe Long, a fourth-generation steelworker, says in the spot.

This first commercial of the campaign is an effort by Specter to remind voters what he has done for the state in his 30 years in office. Sestak, of Delaware County, will need to show what Specter hasn't done.

When asked, Sestak said he was having final meetings about his ads this week. The launch of Specter's ad will probably force Sestak to react quickly.

At the start of the year, Sestak had $5 million on hand that could buy him significant radio and TV airtime as he aims to raise his visibility.

Sestak has trailed Specter by about 20 points in most public opinion polls but is still largely unknown to many Pennsylvanians. A poll released Tuesday by Rasmussen Reports put Sestak just two points behind Specter, a possible indicator of how close this race could get as the May 18 primary nears.

Sestak challenges Vodvarka's petition

Chris Nicholas(Campaign Manager, Citizens for Arlen Specter)released the following statement this morning:

Subject: Specter campaign statement on Sestak's Challenge to Vodvarka's petition signatures

Earlier today in Commonwealth Court Democratic Senate candidate Cong. Joe Sestak challenged the validity of fellow Democratic Senate candidate Joseph Vodvarka's petition signatures.

"It‘s a Democratic Party, and in that Democratic Party, we should be enticing people to come into the process...” -Joe Sestak
(Main Line Media News 10/20/2009 http://sestak1.notlong.com)


Below is a statement from Specter campaign manager Christopher Nicholas:

"Cong. Sestak has spent months saying that his was a new type of campaign, dedicated to changing Washington, D.C. and the Senate. But challenging Mr. Vodvarka's petition signatures is a vivid example of old style back-room politics as usual.

And Cong. Sestak is happy to pay big bucks to lawyers to knock a regular guy like Joe Vodvarka off the ballot, but he's not willing to pay the minimum wage to his own campaign staff.

Once again Cong. Sestak's actions contradict his words.

Let's remember that Cong. Sestak is the same guy who was relieved of command in the Navy for the way he treated the folks who worked for him. Nothing's changed with this guy."

Important Dates leading up to the 2010 Primary

February 16      First day to circulate petitions

March 9            Last day to file petition


April 19            Last day to REGISTER

May 11             Last day to apply for an absentee ballot

May 14             Last day for BOE to receive absentee ballots ...

May 18, 2010   PRIMARY DAY!!!  GO VOTE!