The primary election is fast approaching and the congressional race is wide open due to two factors. First, there is a new state supreme court mandated congressional map that changed how the MoreThanTheCurve.com coverage area is represented. Most of the area has been represented in Congress by Brendan Boyle (D). Boyle is a Northeast Philadelphia politician and when the map changed, where he lives was shifted to a Philadelphia-centric district. The previous map the district he represented combined parts of Philadelphia and Montgomery County.
Secondly, the other incumbent who represented the other part o the MoreThanTheCurve.com coverage area under the old map, Patrick Meehan (R), dropped out of the race due to a taxpayer funded sexual misconduct settlement. His most likely opponent in the general election would have been current State Senator Daylin Leach (D), who dropped out of the race due to allegations of lewd office talk and unwanted touching.
So yea, its a very strange and interesting election season.
So now that the map is settled and Montgomery County is pretty much its own district, here is how the race stands of today:
Democratic Party
There are four candidates and the no clear front runner. The candidates are:
- Mary Jo Daley, a state representative
- Madeline Dean, a state representative
- Shira Goodman, a gun control advocate
- Joe Hoeffel, a former congressman and Montco commissoner
Philly.com reports that the Montgomery County Democratic Committee met last week to vote to endorse a candidate and the results showed the most support for Daley and Dean (together they split 74% of the vote, but neither received the needed 60% on the second ballot to claim the endorsement). On the first ballot Goodman claimed about 23% of the vote and Hoeffel received about 3%.
And can someone please tell Mary Jo Daley that the gun debate is not about machine guns, which are already banned. On her website, she states:
We can not allow one more machine gun to take any more American lives. The current administration believes that allowing for greater access to machine guns at the expense of our children and families is good public safety policy, while the past ten years have proved that it is not. I will work diligently across party lines to enact common sense gun legislation.
Republican Party
The most serious Republican candidate appears to be Dan David, who is described on his website as an “accomplished business executive and entrepreneur with leadership experience in the financial and retail sectors who has spent years working to protect the retirement and other savings of American investors.?
Attorney Marina Kats has a website promoting her candidacy, but in a Philly.com breakdown of the election, she was not listed among the candidates. We also heard there was a third candidate, but we were never able to find a website or social media page promoting that candidate. This person was also not listed as a candidate by Philly.com.
The Republicans are having a vote to endorse a candidate on Thursday night. So who is running and who isn’t should be clearer by the end of the week.
David was one of the stars of a documentary, “The China Hustle,” which details how Wall Street partnered with China to sell misrepresented investments. Joseph DiStefano on Philly.com interviewed David about the documentary in 2017 (prior to his candidacy). Below is the trailer:
The primary election is set for May 15th and the general election will take place on November 6th.
Photos: Individual candidates