A challenge against a sitting judge accused of ethics violations and a five-way race for an open judicial seat are among the races in which Harrisburg residents will cast their votes next Tuesday, May 19, in the municipal primary.
The seats up for election oversee two districts, one encompassing parts of Uptown and North Allison Hill and the other Shipoke, South Allison Hill and Hall Manor.
In the Uptown district, Sonya Baltimore McKnight, a parent engagement specialist at Ben Franklin School, is running against Robert Jennings III, an incumbent who was charged last November by the state Judicial Conduct Board of ethics violations.
The charges, which resulted in Jennings’ suspension with pay while he awaits prosecution, including demanding kickbacks from constables, sitting on citations against him and friends and making sexual remarks to women.
Downtown, a five-way race pits Paul Zozos, the son of a sitting judge in another district, against Bill Cluck, an environmental lawyer, Marva Brown, a social worker, Angel Fox, a casework manager for a state representative and Ausha Green, an employee at the state Department of Education.
The sitting judge in the district, Lavon Postelle, is not running for reelection.
The two Uptown candidates are running on the Democratic ticket, as are all five downtown candidates. Zozos has also cross-filed as a Republican candidate.
Magisterial district judges serve in the minor court system created under the 1968 Pennsylvania Constitution. They hear lower-level cases including traffic violations, landlord-tenant disputes, and civil claims for damages below $12,000.
Their courts also hold original jurisdiction over criminal cases. District judges issue warrants and determine whether to send misdemeanor and felony charges to the county Court of Common Pleas.
Harrisburg currently has five magisterial districts, with judges each serving six-year terms. There are no term limits.
The position comes with an annual salary of $88,000. The city’s district judge offices, funded by the county, have annual budgets this year ranging between $388,000 to $610,000.
A district judgeship has often been a plum prize—and more than once in this city, something of a family business—with candidates occasionally going to great lengths to make a bid for the seat.
In 2002, for example, the state Supreme Court established two new magisterial districts in the city. The next year, one of the freshly created seats attracted a three-way race between Joseph Lahr, Virginia Weaver Zozos and Lavon Postelle.
All three filed as both Democrats and Republicans, and all three mutually attempted to strike each other’s nominations from the ballot. Only Postelle, who currently holds the seat, survived the challenges.
Lahr was at the time the committeeman for the Dauphin County Republicans. He resigned that post the day he filed his nominating papers, but Dauphin County Judge Joseph Kleinfelter ruled that was too late to avoid a conflict.
Zozos, meanwhile, listed a home address in the 1200-block of Hudson Street—even though her family home was in the 600-block of S. 25th St., in a separate district, where her husband, George Zozos, was already a magisterial judge.
Her challengers claimed she didn’t actually live in the district, a requirement for candidacy, offering among other evidence the Hudson Street property’s suspiciously low water bills.
Zozos admitted in court that the sole purpose of buying the other property was to support her judicial campaign. In striking her from the ballot, Judge Kleinfelter called her residency there a “thinly veiled sham.”
