Opinion: The Montgomery County Commissioners Race

The race for the three seats to be a Montgomery County Commissioner involves two Democrat incumbents, Val Arkoosh and Ken Lawrence, and incumbent Republican Joe Gale and non-incumbent Republican Fred Conner.

Usually, both parties run two people in the general election. The party that wins two seats controls the county. The other party is left holding the third minority seat that is guaranteed by law. It’s not the best process.

Some things to consider.

Val Arkoosh lacks political leadership. While she doesn’t hold the position formally, she is the leader of the Montco Democratic Committee. She is the most powerful person in the county. So when you see what happened in regards to the Colonial School Board, its on Arkoosh. She didn’t feel the need to get involved and straighten it out (everyone involved was a Democrat). It is on her. Or we could be totally wrong and she simply agreed with everything.

And it is amazing that Arkoosh, Lawrence, Attorney General Josh Shapiro, and Governor Tom Wolf all refused to answer whether two fellow Democrats have the right to not be included in campaign literature and marketing materials with candidates they have chosen to not run with. The two candidates who are running for Colonial School Board, Susan Moore and Cathy Peduzzi, couldn’t even get Arkoosh and Lawrence to acknowledge their concerns. We asked Wolf and Shapiro about it. Crickets.

The Republican side is well, a circus. Gale is telling Republicans to bullet vote for him (just vote for him, even though you get two votes). Conner is running around talking about safe injection sites, even though there aren’t any proposed in the county. There have been fake green ballots attributed to Conner, pictures of Gale flyering cars at a church, and all types of other nonsense.

Does it really matter which one sits in the first loser’s seat? Not really.

And in regards to the signs that state if you like traffic and closed roads, vote for Democrats. Are the signs factually correct? No. The issue with infrastructure is much more complicated than that. The real question is whether you feel all three commissioners did everything they could to speed the process up. Did they prioritize it? How you feel about that is what should drive your vote.

This is a great opportunity to send a message. Write-in two people.