Calling all Republicans! Republican Petitions this week!

Every year, usually between St-Valentine's day and St-Patrick's day, plus or minus a few days, it's political candidate petition season in Pennsylvania. The goal of party specific petitions is to qualify a candidate as being a reasonable person with a modicum of support in the area. Larger counties like Allegheny County typically require more signatures than Washington County for certain positions. In Pennsylvania, the registered Republicans will sign the Republican petitions, and the registered Democrats that will sign the Democrat petitions, and the same goes for the other parties. These petitions will ensure that we have a choice at both the primaries in May, and of course later in November. An insufficient number of signatures means the candidates cannot be on any ballot, primary or otherwise.

 
At our Peters Township Republicans Petition event this Saturday March 2, we expect a visit from Judge Vic Stabile, the endorsed statewide candidate for the PA Commonwealth Court. He should be with us for an hour or so, on his way to another event in Western PA. We are quite fortunate to book him for this event!

Next, on the Washington county level, we will have Lane Turturice who is running for Washington County Judge and Peters Township's own Angela Carrier who would like to be the Washington County Controller. 

Since all politics are local, it doesn't get any more local than the Judges of Elections (JOE) and Inspectors of Election (IOE). These people will be responsible for ensuring that election rules are followed at the polling places for 2014 and beyond. In Peters Township, we have 12 polling places, therefore 12 JOE positions to vote for. Each Polling place will also have a majority IOE and a minority IOE, for a combined total of 36 positions in Peters Township. Don't be spooked. Your ballot won't be 20 pages long! If you vote in Peters-A3 like I do, you will only see 2 positions on your ballot, the first is for JOE, and the top two IOE will become the majority and minority IOE, specific to Peters-A3. 

Next we have school board positions, and I hear there are several new candidates vying for your attention. Some of the new faces have very impressive resumes when compared to several incumbents.  If you look at the budget, which is published at ( http://www.ptsd.k12.pa.us/Downloads/Budget%20Outlook%2012-13%20-%20preli... ), you'll notice some expenses are skyrocketing at over 5x the inflation rate. I'd like to hear how the incumbents and the new candidates plan to control that crazy spending growth. There were some irregular expenses also during the last term, where it appears to me that the good of the many was sacrificed for the chosen few. I'm hopeful that we can find out more during the campaign season. This could be a very interesting race! 

Finally, for PT Council, every one currently in place is running again, and I haven't seen any publicized new names that want to compete for the jobs.

So there you have it, what's going on and why it's happening. Republicans please come to our events to qualify your candidates. For your convenience we have two events. Please make time and mark you calendars, and maybe you can come with a Republican friend!
First event: Thursday 2/28 7PM-8PM(or more)

Panera Bread 107 Trinity Dr, Washington PA 15301

Second event: Saturday 3/2 11AM-2PM

Rolling Hills Country Club 455 E McMurray Rd, McMurray, PA 15317