Republican Joe Gale, is still crying foul over what he claims is nefarious activity by his fellow Republicans. Gale currently holds “the minority seat” among the County Commissioners. Voters are allowed to cast ballots for only two candidates running for that office, but the top three win. In that way, at least one of the the three seats is guaranteed to go to the “minority party,” which in Montgomery County has been the Republicans.
Joe Gale expected his brother Sean to be his running-mate this fall.
In May, Gale, and his younger brother Sean (Joe turned 30 in March, Sean is 28) ran as a team in the Republican Primary, but on Election Day, the Gale Brothers dream of running together in November was thwarted by Fred Connor, who according to Joe Gale, was the preferred candidate of Liz Havey. Havey is the Chair of the Montgomery County Republican Committee, and before that she was Chair of the Republican Committee of Lower Merion Narberth. The Republican Primary race for County Commissioner was supposed to be an “open primary,” which means no party endorsement.
Joe Gale claims that his brother Sean would have won the primary if not for what he calls “the fake green sample ballots,” which according to Gale, were intended to deceive Republican voters into thinking that Connor was an endorsed candidate.
It’s hard to say whether or not Gale’s claim that his brother only lost because of the “fake ballots” has any merit. Sean Gale lost to Connor by 1,750 votes. Nobody knows exactly how many Fred Connor “green ballots” were actually circulated, and nobody knows how many Connor votes would have flipped to Sean Gale if there were no “Green Connor Ballots.” And what would have happened if the Gale Brothers had used a fake green ballot of their own?
When asked if she planned to respond to Gale’s letter, MCRC Chair Liz Havey said that she would address the letter, but “wasn’t sure on timing.” She said “she had spent the morning with the state chair, and other Republicans working on plans to beat Democrats. That is the focus of MCRC’s efforts.”
Democrats had Yellow-Ballot-Gate, but it didn’t last as long.
Democrats were not about to let Republicans have the “fake ballot” controversy all to themselves. In Lower Merion’s Ward 13 (Bala Cynwyd) the endorsed candidate, Gilda Kramer, attempted to stop Mike Leibowitz from using yellow sample ballots. Lacking any similarity at all between the two ballots, other than the background color, and that both ballots used the English language, the Democratic Committee argued that they owned the intellectual property rights to color yellow. The committee threatened to get an injunction to force Leibowitz to stop using his yellow ballots, but they didn’t follow through on that threat, and Kramer, in spite of Leibowitz’s continued use of his “deceptive” ballots, won the election easily.