Mayor Eric Papenfuse.
Councilman Brad Koplinski.
In 2013, they spent heavily on his mayoral campaign, helping him secure the Democratic nomination in the primary and cruise to victory in the general.
Now, as voters prepare to elect new candidates to City Council, the members of Harrisburg Capital PAC and Mayor Eric Papenfuse are again in step.
Though they have yet to make a formal announcement, the PAC will endorse the same three council candidates running for four-year seats—one incumbent and two challengers—that Papenfuse officially declared he was endorsing last Friday, according to J. Alex Hartzler, the group’s co-founder.
(Hartzler, a principal at WCI Partners, an area developer, is TheBurg’s publisher.)
The challengers Papenfuse and the PAC have endorsed are Westburn Majors, a lobbyist with Gmerek Government Relations, and Cornelius Johnson, a Susquehanna Township health officer. The incumbent they endorsed, Jeff Baltimore, is a former Harrisburg city economic development officer who was appointed to council in 2014 to replace Eugenia Smith, who died that April.
Papenfuse endorsed them during an appearance last week on TheBurg Podcast, a weekly news roundup produced by the magazine.
In explaining his endorsement, Papenfuse highlighted Johnson’s experience in municipal government, Majors’ connections at the statehouse and Baltimore’s background in economic development. He did not make an endorsement for the two-year seat, for which seven candidates, including Baltimore, are also running.
The PAC is endorsing the same three candidates, Hartzler said, because they “share our desire to make the city better.”
The PAC also sponsored a telephone survey earlier this month that was mentioned during a candidate’s night last week at Harris Street United Methodist Church, sponsored by Friends of Midtown, a neighborhood association.
During his remarks that night, Brad Koplinski, an incumbent candidate who has served on council since 2008, accused the poll of being specifically designed to test negative messages against him and no other candidates.
But John Jones, a partner at the WS Group, a Harrisburg-based political consulting firm that has contracted with Harrisburg Capital PAC since 2013, strongly objected to Koplinski’s description. He described the survey as a message-testing poll, designed to “get a feel of where the population is” in advance of the May 19 primary.
Jones said the survey, conducted by a “well-respected Democratic polling firm,” tested a mix of positive and negative messages on a variety of candidates and issues. Claims it was weighted unfavorably against Koplinski are “patently false,” he said.
The polling firm, Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, headquartered in Washington, D.C., has worked on behalf of several high-profile clients, including Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf and New York Mayor Bill DeBlasio.
A representative at the firm did not return calls Wednesday.
The American Association for Public Opinion Research, a professional organization for survey and opinion researchers, distinguishes between legitimate message-testing polls and “push polls,” which are used to spread usually negative information under the guise of research and which the organization condemns as illegitimate.
The survey had around 300 respondents, according to Jones, a sample size more in keeping with a message-testing poll than a push poll, which would normally seek to reach huge swaths of the electorate rather than a representative sample.
Marie Ledger, a Midtown resident who took part in the telephone survey on April 2, said the call came from a Washington state number and lasted around 16 minutes.
During the call, the surveyor asked her to name three council candidates she was considering voting for. When her list included Koplinski, she said, the survey proceeded to ask whether the mention of various past votes or positions of Koplinski’s would cause her to change her mind.
“They didn’t have any problems with the other two, just with Brad,” Ledger recalled. “I started thinking, ‘What is this?’” When she asked who was conducting the survey, the surveyor “said he didn’t know, he was new on the job,” she said.
Papenfuse, asked about the survey Wednesday, said he was aware of the poll and had viewed its results. He denied, however, that he and Harrisburg Capital PAC were “coordinating” campaign efforts in the race for City Council. (The PAC contributed extensively to Papenfuse’s 2013 mayoral bid, spending $185,380 during that election cycle, $60,500 of which were direct contributions to the Papenfuse campaign, according to campaign finance filings.)
Even so, Papenfuse has made no secret of his distaste for Koplinski, who obstructed the mayor’s efforts to pass a citywide tax-abatement policy in late 2014 and earlier this year. He was the sole candidate the mayor bestowed with an anti-endorsement during his statements about the council race last Friday.
“We have to make sure that we don’t reelect Brad Koplinski,” Papenfuse said. “There has to be fresh, independent new voices.”
Koplinski, who has said he supports a more limited form of abatement than what the mayor proposed, tied the survey to his position on the policy, saying it had been paid for by “moneyed interests and developers” who sought to dislodge him.
Hartzler denied this, however, saying that Koplinski was simply trying to divert attention from his “personal failings” as a two-term council member.
“Elections aren’t about any one issue,” he said. “Politicians on the losing side of things try to make them about one issue.”
An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated the length of time Koplinski has served as a City Council member. He has been a councilman since 2008, not 2004.
