Newcomer aims to unseat incumbent
Larry Maggi
Harlan Shober
Diana Irey Vaughan
Mike McCormick
There’s a Washington County commissioners’ race with an out-of-the-ordinary contest on the ballot in Republican vote-rich Peters Township, where one of the candidates happens to live.
In the Washington County commissioners race, in deference to the late Yogi Berra, it might be said that it’s like deja vu all over again.
In 2011, the last time county commissioners were on the ballot, Peters residents were deciding a referendum on natural-gas drilling, which pushed turnout to 42 percent in a community where, in an off-year election, it hovers around 20. Republican Bill Northrop Jr. was making a bid for an open seat being vacated by long-time commissioner Bracken Burns, and the outcome wasn’t known for certain until absentee ballots were tabulated two days after the election.
This year, there’s a special election to fill a vacant state Senate seat created with the resignation of Democrat Matt Smith. Peters is the only Washington County community in the 37th District, which includes a large swath of Allegheny County’s South Hills and western municipalities. Republican Mike McCormick, like Northrop, a Peters resident, is making a bid for Washington County commissioner.
Harlen Shober, a Democrat, edged Northrop by one-half of one percentage point four years ago, and a few weeks ago, he said, “The referendum was a very personal thing and it made people turn out to make sure their voice was heard. People wanted to have their say on what they were going to do there.”
Does he feel like it’s a replay of 2011?
“It’s a whole different scenario,” Shober, now an incumbent, continued. “If you have support from around the whole county, it sort of balances out. You can’t control it.”
McCormick might agree that it’s a whole different scenario, but he senses an anti-incumbency mood among the electorate that he sees working in his favor.
“To me it shows people are looking for new energy, new people and new ideas,” McCormick said. “We know how to evaluate what we presently have and if there’s discontent with that, then a new person should be able to fill it and make a difference. I don’t hold any political office at the moment, and believe me, as I go around the county and talk to people, that seems to be helpful.”
In a race for county commissioner, any number of names can appear on a ballot due to third-party members and independents. In Washington County this year, voters will see the names of four candidates, two Democrats and two Republicans. They get to vote for two, but, by the end of vote-counting, three will be elected to the office.
All three incumbents are running, so McCormick, to gain public office, will have to unseat someone. After two unsuccessful runs for Congress, he’s back on the hustings, handing out campaign cards bearing his personal cellphone number. As an investment manager, he fielded many a call from nervous clients as the stock market tanked in 2008, and he encourages voters – whom he hopes will be his constituents in the not-to-distant future – to keep the lines of communication open.
According to a recent mailing, Democrats Larry Maggi, the board chairman, and Shober are running as a team under the slogan, “One good term deserves another.” Shober will have one, four-year term as the close of 2015, but Maggi is actually running for his fourth term. He has led the ticket each time he has sought the commissioners’ office.
The two Republican commission candidates – Vice Chairman Diana Irey Vaughan and McCormick, plus incumbent Republican District Attorney Gene Vittone – have appeared as a slate on a direct mail piece from the Peters Township Republican Committee, Irey Vaughan said. While the incumbents are naturally stressing positive aspects of Washington County, such as the number of energy giants that have located here due to the extraction of natural gas from the Marcellus Shale, 267 projects funded since 2008 because of gambling revenue from The Meadows Racetrack and Casino, and $4 million worth of improvements at the Washington County Airport, McCormick is quick to point out that all’s not well within the county.
The challenger points to drug use, causing overdoses that are fatal and otherwise, as the No. 1 issue he’s hearing about as he campaigns around the county.
“I would prefer to lead the challenge of mitigating heroin’s impact on our community and not just heroin, but cocaine,” McCormick said. “We can make a major dent in it. What you hear now is, ‘You can’t do anything about it, it’s out of control. They don’t really hear anybody offering up any solutions.”
McCormick is calling his initiative “Create a Community,” an effort to identify what drugs look like and teaching parents how to communicate this with their children, but also organizing teachers, coaches, parents, pastors, rabbis and ministers one community at a time. “The county should have more resources on education of children starting with the most vulnerable or at-risk areas,” he said.
Maggi, a former state trooper and county sheriff, said, “I’ve been a state trooper and sheriff for most of my life. Trillions spent on the war on drugs. It’s a societal problem, it’s not just Washington County or Southwestern Pennsylvania. It’s not just putting somebody who’s addicted into jail and throwing away the key. We’ve seen that need for counseling, for presentence services and we’ve made some monies available.
We have to listen to our district attorney and our law enforcement and let them take care of the enforcement of it.
“We’re in the process of hiring more people in the courts, adult probation and corrections, and we’re working with (President) Judge (Katherine B.) Emery to hire those services and put them in place.”
Shober also cited the county’s funding of the district attorney’s office and the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program for students in which the sheriff’s department participates.
“It’s not just Washington County, it’s all over,” Shober said. “If they want to sell drugs, they need to go to some other county because I want them to stop. They need to go to some type of incarceration. Users, we need to treat them.”
Irey Vaughan called stemming the tide of heroin “one of our top priorities, allocating the appropriate amount of funds to fighting this issue, whether that be the DA’s office and the drug task force or what money we allocate for treatment. We can impact that by what we are doing in our jail. My experience in speaking with incarcerated individuals or offenders has been that they ask for services when they are in jail so they can rehab, and I think we can do a better job at providing those resources.”
Irey Vaughan is also interested in seeing the county start a pilot program for naltrexone, which is used to treat opioid and alcohol addiction, noting that it’s not uncommon for addicts to go through rehab more than once, but that reducing recidivism would reduce both costs and overcrowding at the county jail.
Another major issue that faces voters will be a piece of mail that landowners are due to receive by February: their new property assessment.
After an extended court battle, all three commissioners voted in 2013 to award a $6.96 million contract to Tyler Technologies Inc. of Moraine to perform a countywide reassessment, which has gone along rather quietly but is sure to make a big splash next year.
Both Shober and Irey Vaughan said they’re committed to lowering millage to offset anticipated increases in property assessments so that the county’s levy will be “revenue-neutral.”
“We’re not happy about doing this,” Maggi said. “The complaints from people, I know they’re going to be valid. We agree with the people who are going to come in and complain. Probably 99 percent of the complaints I’m going to agree with.”
McCormick sees a public that seems to be confused about the status of the property reassessment, and he has talked to those who are concerned about a huge tax increase. “When we are fearful we are not in the best frame of mind,” he said.