Joe Who?
Joe Gale is 31 years old, but he got started in politics early, so it seems like “he’s been around,” for a while. On Tuesday (June 2), Kevin Tierney wrote this about him on More than the Curve.
“As a 20-year-old in 2009, he ran for a seat on Plymouth Township’s Council and lost. He ran again in 2013, this time for an at-large seat, and withdrew when he realized he was not going to receive the party’s endorsement.
In 2015, he considered primarying fellow Republican and incumbent Bob Godshall to represent the 53rd District in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives (which would have required him to move out of his mom’s house in Plymouth Meeting and have a residence in the Lansdale area). He decided against that and in 2015 ran for a seat on the Montgomery County Board of Commissioners.”
Tierney also explained that on the Montgomery County Board of Commissioners “One seat is reserved for a party that does not win the majority. For the very most part, the Republicans and Democrats put up two candidates who are determined in the primary. Three of the four-win seats. So one candidate is basically a lucky loser. All Gale had to do is get more votes than the other Republican for a seat on a board that runs a county with a larger population than four states (if you are wondering they are North Dakota, Alaska, Vermont, and Wyoming).”
Maybe Gale had more than just luck going for him.
Considering that in the 2015 Primary, Gale beat two candidates endorsed by the Montgomery County Republican Committee, and that he beat his Republican rival, Steve Tolbert, by more than 3,000 votes in the General Election (even though Tolbert had the first position on the ballot), Gale’s harshest critics might have to admit that that his political success is not an accident.
Joe Gale was on to something in May of 2015, when he shocked the “Old Guard”of Montco Republicans, almost a month to the day before Donald Trump’s announcement speech (June 15, 2015) – “They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists, and some, I assume are good people.”
After conservative talk show host Dom Giordano endorsed him in the 2015 primary, Gale spoke on Dom’s show and told his audience that “I’m the only true conservative. Both my opponents are RINOS (Republicans in Name Only).”
Gale was way ahead of the curve in terms of his support of Donald Trump (which has been unwavering). Again, with the help of Giordano’s radio megaphone, Gale announced his endorsement of Trump on February 25, 2016. This was when Ted Cruz was still calling Trump a “Pathological Liar” and “a Narcissist;” Lindsey Graham was calling him a “He’s a race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot;” and Marco Rubio was saying Trump was “an embarrassment” who and that Trump was “cultivating a party of fear.”
At Age 28, Gale Runs For Lt. Governor, Even Though The State Constitution Says You Have To Be 30.
In January of 2018, at the age of 28, Gale announced that he was seeking the office of Lt. Governor. The only problem with that was, if Gale were to win, he would have only been 29 years old on Inauguration Day, in January 2019. And the Pennsylvania Constitution limits the job of Lt. Governor to persons 30 years-old and above.
When Gale made his announcement, Holly Otterbein wrote in the Inquirer, “If the Darwin Awards were given to political campaigns that died under tremendously stupid circumstances, Joe Gale’s bid for lieutenant governor may soon qualify.”
Gale however, had it all figured out. He told Otterbein, “You do not have to be 30 to run or be elected — you just must be 30 at the time of the swearing-in. So I would have to wait only two months to assume office,” he said. “There was a U.S. senator from West Virginia, Rush Holt Sr., who was under 30 and had to wait six months to take office. And a congressman from Kentucky, John Y. Brown, who was under the required age of 25 and had to wait until the second year of his term to get sworn in. For me, it’s only two months.”
A Commonwealth Court Judge saw it differently and removed Gale from the ballot. In a letter to the editor of the Pottsville Mercury, Gale likened the court’s striking down his candidacy to the “rogue Pennsylvania Supreme Court changed the state’s federal congressional lines weeks before the 2018 mid-term elections.
2019 – It’s The Gale Brothers!
When ran he for re-election in the 2019 Republican Primary, Joe Gale teamed up with his younger brother, Sean Gale. Joe Gale came in second in that primary, to Fred Conner. But his brother ran fourth, failing to “make the cut” for the general election.
Joe Gale claimed that both he and his brother Sean would have won the primary if not for what he called “the fake green sample ballots,” deployed by the Montco “GOP Regulars,” which according to Gale, were intended to deceive Republican voters into thinking that Connor was an endorsed candidate.
“Green-Ballot-Gate” became Gale’s rallying cry in the general election, when he unapologetically called upon Republican voters to cast a “Bullet Vote” for him.
The strategy worked. Gale outpolled Conner, 74,023 to 68,186, and won a second term as “Minority Commissioner.”
October, 2019
