On February 19, 2018 Mary Gay Scanlon was a former member of the Walingford-Swarthmore School Board.
Madeleine Dean, on February 19, 2018, was a member of the Pennsylvania House, and a candidate for Lt. Governor.
And the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, on February 19, 2018, released a new map of Pennsylvania’s congressional districts.
Three days later, Dean announced that instead of running for Lt. Governor, she was going to be a candidate for congress in the newly created 4th Congressional District.
And on February 25, 2018, Scanlon announced that she was a candidate for Congress in the freshly minted 5th District.
In the Democratic Primaries of 2018, Dean won a three-way race in the 4th District, and Scanlon (with 28.3% of the vote) defeated nine other candidates in the 5th. Both of them won their general elections easily that year and had little difficulty winning re-election in 2020 – All because of the off-off year 2015 election, in which Democrats swept all three Pennsylvania Supreme Court seats that were up for grabs. Voter turnout in that election was about 27%.
On January 22, 2018, along party lines, the state Supreme Court voted 5-2 to throw out the 2012 the state congressional map that Republicans had drawn.
After the Supreme Court ruled, the legislature and Governor Wolf were unable to agree on a new map, so the court “arranged” to have the map drawn.
And that’s why Madeleine Dean and Mary Gay Scanlon will tell you that state judicial elections don’t just matter, they can be crucially important.
Another State Supreme Court Election Next Month.
Election Day this year is on November 2. Thomas Saylor, one of the two Republican judges currently serving on the Supreme Court, will reach the mandatory retirement age of 75 this year and will be stepping down. Maria McLaughlin will try to give Democrats a 6-1 majority on the State’s highest court, but Republican Kevin Brobson will be doing his best to keep the spread at 5-2