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Hijinx Pt. III: Judicial party flippers

Published by Tim McNulty on .

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Mailer hijinx continue . . .

Up is down and down is up when it comes to Allegheny County's judicial candidates. Candidates are allowed to cross-file on both the Democratic and Republican ballots which can lead to shenanigans when they're searching for extra votes across party lines (in a bid to get both the Dem and GOP nominations, all but assuring them a win in November).

As usual, North Pittsburgh Politics has the goods. First up is Jennifer Satler. Satler is a Democrat and has the endorsement of the county's Democratic committee but in an effort to collect Republican votes she issued a mailer (above) that pictures her with U.S. Rep. Tim Murphy, R-Upper St. Clair, and says "Republicans Agree: Jennifer Satler For Judge." Murphy has not endorsed her however -- his only public judicial backing has been for Republican Bill Ward from neighboring Mt. Lebanon, according to the congressman's chief aide Susan Mosychuk.

Photos in the mailer show they were taken at Rosedale Tech in Kennedy Township, a job training center with a special emphasis in training vets. It's in Murphy's 18th District and he commonly speaks on military/vets issues -- Satler is on the board of the Keystone Veterans Assistance Foundation. One can imagine the uniformed soldiers in the bottom left of the mailpiece won't be thrilled to see themselves pictured in political material.

Speaking of Ward . . . he too is in the confusing mailer crowd.You can't be much more Republican than Ward (he was Tom Corbett's chief of staff before the guv nominated him for an open judge seat), but in a flip of Satler's move he is lately claiming to be a Democrat. And not just any Democrat: "THE NUMBER ONE DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE." Not sure what that means, as even in the official poll position of those on the Democratic ballot he's at number 7, right about in the middle.

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Highjinx Pt II: City Council Dist 4

Published by Tim McNulty on .

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Lots of election time fun & games happening today, largely with flyers/mailers. Let's start with a handout from Pittsburgh City Council District 4 candidate Johnny Lee, who's trying to oust incumbent Natalia Rudiak.

Lee's team has been handing out flyers prominently featuring a headline from the Post-Gazette . . . 21 years ago, on his high-school basketball team. It also uses the word "endorsement."

Suburban editions of the Feb. 27, 1992 P-G ran a Q&A with the then Seton-LaSalle basketball couch headlined "Postman delivers the wins at Seton" -- when the second half of the story jumped two pages later the hed was "Postman John Lee delivers the wins at Seton-LaSalle." (See for yourself on pages 30 and 32 of this Google archive of the story.)

Under the PG quote the flyer also says "Endorsed Democrat for City Council."

The Rudiak camp complains that this infers the endorsement of P-G editorial board, which rather went to the incumbent. The endorsement Lee has is from the Democratic Committee, which Rudiak didn't compete for. The back of the Lee flyer (below) contains the full P-G quote and notes it's about his success with the basketball team.

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Election hijinx, part one

Published by Andrew McGill on .

Of all the complaints we're sure to hear over the course of this Election Day, here's one we heard around the water cooler.
 
A P-G staff member who is registered as an independent was told at a polling station in Mt. Lebanon this morning that he could not vote, that the only races were primaries for voters affiliated with political parties. Not so. There is a special election for Pennsylvania's 42nd House District in the South Hills. The seat was formerly held by Matt Smith, who was elected to the state Senate in November.
 
The poll workers eventually let our staff member vote after checking out a bright yellow notice posted on the wall that listed the special election and after finding voting cards for unaffiliated voters in their filing box. They said they had turned away one other independent voter earlier this morning and would give her a call.
 
A little more training next time, Allegheny County Board of Elections?
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Primary programming

Published by Tim McNulty on .

Simpsons technical difficulties

Hi everyone. Why so dead, you ask? The Early Returns team will get to work in earnest later this afternoon and take you through the 8 p.m. close of polls and beyond. Til then, best to keep tabs on the breaking news section for any . . . breaking news on election day.

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Breakfast Sausage: 5 stories to read this morning

Published by Andrew McGill on .

Election day, folks! Start chowin' down now.

1. Jim O'Toole takes closes the book on the campaigning, writing on how even a bedridden Sophie Masloff can't be kept from the polls. KDKA wraps up by covering the final round of negative advertising. And of course, you can still see our photojournalists' coverage of the campaign trail.

2. Whomever is elected, he might want to take a look at the P-G's "One Big Idea" section from Sunday, which queried city figures famous and obscure for what they think the next executive's priorities should be.

3. Eric Boehm at PAIndependent has the long-view look at the fascinating Harrisburg mayors race, which looks even more contentious than our own.

4. For those tuning out of the election: Our Tim Grant writes about the miserable plight of graduates buried beneath student loan debt. Familiar story, but new poll numbers show what exactly they're giving up.

5. Lastly, stay tuned tonight to Laura Schneiderman's live elections results interactive, with ward-by-ward totals for the mayor's race.

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