Whitemarsh Township involved one of the few competitive primaries in the area in the May 19th primary election. There were four candidates running in the Democratic Party primary to represent Whitemarsh Township as the state representative for the 148th district, which, in addition to Whitemarsh, includes Narberth and a portion of Lower Merion Township. The race was without an incumbent as longtime State Representative Mary Jo Daley (D) had announced her retirement.
The four candidates included recently elected Whitemarsh Township Supervisor Megan Griffin-Shelley, former Narberth Mayor Andrea Deutsch, environmental lawyer and civil rights advocate Jason Landau Goodman, and Leo Solga, a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School.
Griffin-Shelley and Landau Goodman were the frontrunners in the race. Griffin-Shelley secured Daley’s key endorsement and is a Whitemarsh native. Goodman picked up his share of endorsements and is a native of the Main Line side of the district.
The unofficial election results from Montgomery County have Griffin-Shelly edging out Landau Goodman 4,879 to 4,777, or 102 votes.
The graphic below shows the results for the Whitemarsh Township portion of the district, where turnout was just 19.87%. Goodman-Shelley dominated the vote with 2,528 of the 3,108 votes cast.
Lower Merion, which has 50,033 registered Democratic Party voters compared to Whitemarsh’s 15,642, has a slightly higher turnout at 25.63%. Landau Goodman more than doubled Griffin-Shelley’s vote total in Lower Merion, where he received 4,204 votes to Griffin-Shelley’s 1,935. Please note that the registered voters, ballots cast, and voter turnout numbers represent the total number of Democratic Party voters and ballots cast in Lower Merion, which is split between two state representative districts (those numbers aren’t specific to the 148th).
Narberth had an interesting result as the former mayor, Andrea Deutsch, did not receive the most votes. This is where Daley’s endorsement of Griffin-Shelley probably had the strongest impact, as she is a resident of Narberth and served on the borough council prior to serving in the state legislature. Griffin-Shelley won Narberth with 416 votes. Landau Goodman also received more votes than Deutsch in Narberth, 311 to 296.
Griffin-Shelley will now move to the general election in November. The Republican Party did not have a candidate on the ballot for its primary, but just prior to the election, the Montgomery County Republican Committee was promoting Matthew Abelson as its preferred write-in candidate. Abelson lives in Lower Merion, and according to the Republicans, he is “a Rabbi, educator, coach, father, and husband.” It is not yet known if Abelson, or another write-in candidate, received enough write-in votes to face Griffin-Shelley in November.
Photo: Griffin-Shelley campaign