By Matt Snyder
PENNSYLVANIA — Do you worry about your taxes? How about your kids’ education? Or how about getting a fair shake if you’ve got to go to the courtroom?
If you do, there might just be an important local election in your neighborhood.
While it lacks the star power of presidential or even mid-term congressional elections, today’s races include a battle for county treasurer that will decide whether to keep the incumbent or to hire a newcomer to invest your tax dollars.
In the Greenville area, an appointed district judge who won in the primary will face off against an independent who’s intent on giving the voters an option.
Several candidates have waged campaigns against incumbents, citing the need for competitive elections.
How many Mercer Countians will show their agreement by showing up to vote remains to be seen, but county elections chief Jeff Greenburg places turnout at about 28 to 30 percent – less than half of the 66 percent turnout during last year’s presidential race.
Turnout at the polls across the state is expected to be low. Terry Madonna, a professor and pollster at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, says he expects no more than one-quarter of the nearly 8.5 million voters to cast ballots in an election in which only the Supreme Court race has attracted statewide news coverage.
“Not in Pennsylvania’s history has that been a ballot driver,” he said.
Also open locally will be a number of city and township posts and plenty of competitive school board races, including in Lakeview, Farrell, Hermitage, Sharon, and West Middlesex school districts.
Five candidates are competing for three spots as Hermitage commissioners, including three incumbents. In Sharon, three candidates will run for two seats on council; only one is an incumbent.
As for higher offices, the candidates for Pennsylvania’s highest court Monday were winding down a $3 million-plus campaign for state Supreme Court, marked by blistering attack ads and big money from special interests.
The battle for a single open seat between Democrat Jack Panella and Republican Joan Orie Melvin tops today’s statewide election ballot that also features contests for four openings on the state Superior Court and two on the Commonwealth Court.
Both Supreme Court candidates are sitting judges on the Superior Court — Panella in Bethlehem, Melvin in Pittsburgh. A Melvin victory would restore the one-seat Republican majority that the party lost in 2007, while a Panella win would sustain the Democrats’ 4-3 edge
Justice Jane Cutler Greenspan, a Democrat, holds the position but agreed not to seek a full 10-year term when she was appointed to complete the term of the late Chief Justice Ralph Cappy after he retired last year.
Panella, 54, has raised the most campaign cash by far — more than $2.5 million — mostly from lawyers and various organized labor groups. Trial-lawyer groups in Philadelphia and Williamsport alone have given $1.3 million, according to campaign finance reports on file Monday.
Melvin, 53, has charged that Panella’s reliance on special-interest money may compromise his objectivity on the bench.
Panella, insisting that cases will be judged on their merit, said that fundraising is a necessary, if distasteful, part of running a judicial campaign and that Melvin also has accepted special-interest money.
The election outcome could lock in the partisan lineup on the Supreme Court for five years. No other changes in the court’s makeup are anticipated before 2014, when Chief Justice Ronald Castille would reach the mandatory retirement age of 70.
Some political observers believe control of the high court could be crucial in the legislative redistricting that will follow the 2010 census. But lawyers from both parties say that is unlikely, noting that the justices have not overturned any of the four redistricting plans that have been hammered out since the task was turned over to bipartisan panels under a constitutional amendment approved in 1968.
