Cornelius Johnson and Westburn Majors, two of the victors in the recent Democratic primary for Harrisburg City Council.
In the Burg Blog, I’ve written previously about my distaste for editorial boards and professional editorial writers.
My dislike has nothing to do with certain individual columnists or newspapers. I just find it confounding and presumptuous that people, sitting in an office building somewhere, can cast judgment on issues that they’ve never covered and really know little about.
They’re not at the meetings; they don’t witness the often-subtle dynamics between the players; they don’t interview anyone; chances are, they rarely even step foot in the places (like Harrisburg city hall) they’re writing about.
How can you have an informed opinion about something in which you have such limited knowledge? Yet, there they are—people whose main job is to have opinions about stuff. How strange.
That thought occurred to me again the other day when PennLive’s editorial board weighed in on Harrisburg’s recently concluded primary election. The rather sloppy editorial seemed to suggest that Harrisburg Mayor Eric Papenfuse, in alliance with businessman Alex Hartzler, unduly influenced the election.
I’m not writing this blog post to defend Papenfuse or Hartzler, who, no wallflowers, are perfectly capable of defending themselves (Hartzler also is publisher of TheBurg). My issue is that the editorial demonstrates scant knowledge of what actually happened in that election and, just as much, with the election process itself.
A mayor, any mayor, has an interest in seeing that his agenda is passed. Mayors do this in numerous ways, including compromise, cajoling, begging, alliance-building, promising, cutting deals, even intimidation. They also often try to get their supporters elected to the legislative body, in this case, City Council.
Over the past year or so, Papenfuse has employed various tactics to pass legislation that he deems important to the future of Harrisburg. At some point, he concluded that several council members, including Wanda Williams and Brad Koplinski, were obstacles to this agenda. Therefore, he went on the offensive, seeking to unseat Koplinski and neutralize the power of Williams, the council president.
When Papenfuse vocally urged Harrisburg residents to reject Koplinski and vote for his preferred candidates (Cornelius Johnson, Jeffrey Baltimore and Westburn Majors), I thought his stance might be too aggressive, that it might turn off voters or even mobilize supporters of the other candidates. But he gambled that, in the end, more residents would be motivated to vote for his slate than vote against it, that he could have out-sized influence in what would be a very low-turnout election. To his credit, he was right.
Papenfuse’s bold support of and campaigning for Johnson and Majors, two men with little name recognition a few months back, almost certainly helped their election. Likewise, his condemnation of the incumbent Koplinski, the candidate with perhaps the greatest name recognition (and recently a candidate for lieutenant governor), almost certainly led to his loss.
As for Hartlzer—I don’t understand why the PennLive editorial mentioned him three times. Yes, he is a member of Harrisburg Capital PAC, but the PAC’s donations were hardly excessive ($5,000 to Johnson and $1,500 to Majors, according to Dauphin County Elections Bureau). The PAC also paid for a poll early in the election cycle (the negative mailings that Koplinski repeatedly warned would result from the poll never materialized).
The sad truth is that, in the United States, elections are financed privately. Any serious Harrisburg council candidate should expect to spend at least $5,000 for campaign signs, literature and mailings. I don’t like it—PennLive evidently doesn’t—but that’s the way it is.
That said: money guarantees nothing. Koplinski received $500 from Vision for PA PAC, $1,000 from IBEW 98 out of Philadelphia and $2,000 from a guy named Alex Shchegol of Staten Island, N.Y., among other contributors. And he still lost, as did other candidates who raised money.
And that brings me to the most important point.
The PennLive editorial, while crediting (or blaming) Papenfuse and Hartzler for the primary results, ignores one of the most important and obvious factors in the election: the candidates themselves. The editorial reads as if a Big Brother-like force selected these candidates to run and then people hypnotically marched to the polls to nominate them.
In fact, Johnson was a superb candidate who ran an energetic, well-organized campaign. He was everywhere: at neighborhood events, at doorsteps, at debates, where he presented himself as caring, hardworking and knowledgeable. He also raised a significant sum of money from sources other than Harrisburg Capital PAC. Voters—particularly “super voters” who vote in every election and were rightly targeted by Johnson—responded to that effort. Did the mayor’s endorsement help? Yes, but Johnson deserves much credit for his own victory.
Destini Hodges, who was not endorsed by Papenfuse, also ran an energetic campaign. Voters similarly responded to her effort, and she won the two-year council seat by a surprisingly large margin.
I was not impressed with the campaigns of the other candidates, even the winners. Incumbent Baltimore, who placed second for three, four-year council seats, did not run a particularly vigorous campaign, but he is well liked and well regarded, and his election was never seriously in doubt. Majors may have benefited most from Papenfuse’s nod, eking out a 19-vote win for the final four-year seat.
As per Koplinski—he depended too much on the perceived power of incumbency and not enough on selling himself again to the voters of Harrisburg. If he had, he might have been able to overcome Papenfuse’s anti-endorsement—or even used it to his advantage. If anyone could fend off, or even turn the tables on Papenfuse, it should have been Koplinski, a two-term councilman whose day job is professional political consultant.
In the end, PennLive seems baffled by Papenfuse, whom the editorial condescendingly describes as a “two-time failed candidate for elected office with no political experience” until two years ago. How could he now have so much power and influence?
I can tell you how: Papenfuse has learned. Over the years, he’s learned how to be successful in politics, how to go from sideline firebrand to skilled tactician who got himself elected and now is helping to elect others. He has a clear idea of what he wants to do and plots a path to achieve it. He also is focused and works harder than other politicians in the city.
You may disagree with Papenfuse’s agenda; I don’t agree with all of it. However, even in disagreement, I can see that he has grown immeasurably as a political practitioner. In that sense, he deserves respect—enthusiastic or grudging, depending on your viewpoint—not sour grapes or condescension.
Harrisburg deserves a fuller accounting and more sophisticated analysis of an important election from its “paper of record.” The vote totals resulted from some combination of the candidates themselves, their campaign strategies, the voters, the low turnout and, yes, the influence of Papenfuse (both pro- and anti-). The backers of the candidates, whether Hartzler, Shchegol, Jimmy Pianka or Dan Miller, also played small roles.
The election, like most elections, was a complex beast, dependent upon many factors that mixed, mingled and overlapped. The superficial, rather lazy, analysis by PennLive shows little understanding of that complexity.
