The LuLac Edition #5, 787, October 6th, 2026

 

LOOKS LIKE BURNING INSTEAD OF BUILDING A BRIDGE

  

They talk about October surprises in politics and while this has been a national thing, you can count on Wilkes-Barre to weigh in on a political “wanna be gotcha”. To be clear things are sailing along pretty well for the Luzerne County Democrats with talk of some successes in November. Democrats are energized by a new leadership team that has been busy building coalitions that make political sense. Given the state of the country vs the state, with a Republican administration screwing up at the federal level in every conceivable way vs. the state level where the Shapiro administration has gotten stuff done, you’d think that there wouldn’t be any discord among Democrats.

Yeah…well this is not the case.

Last week a Facebook post proclaimed that a few members of the Democratic party were abandoning the core principles that they claim to believe by endorsing a Republican for the seat of Eddie Day Pashinski. As you recall earlier in the year Jessica McClay defeated Michael Stadulis in a contested primary for the 121rst. Stadulis, to my knowledge, never conceded and now has been joined by two other people who couldn’t even get enough signatures on the ballot to endorse Mike Harostock the Mayor from Bear Creek. Denise Thomnas, a long time School Director and Ann Marie Mantione have expressed their support for the GOP nominee by latching onto his “building a bridge” campaign slogan.  Haristock, via the state GOP party has been sending flyers, making the rounds and faces what other promising candidates of the past like Sue Henry, and Eryn Harvey had to contend with which is a comfortable Democratic edge in registration in this district. The strategy of adding Democratic support is a well-known way of making your candidacy a bi-partisan effort.

Except there are two things wrong here.

1.  Any sane voter of the 121^st district is not going to believe that ANY Republican is going to “build bridges” in this contentious environment. With the broken promises of Trump, Meuser and Bresnehan, which has made complete fools out of those who believed  their lies as well as the toxic acquiescence of GOP legislators in this county is going to make that a hard hill to climb.

2.  The people supporting the Republican candidate have a weak reason for throwing their support to Harostok.  Stadulis was beaten badly and Thomas and Montone were not even in the primary.  The agenda here is clear. They lost, were pissed and now claim they want to build bridges with an opponent  instead of members of their own party. They’d rather throw in with an untested candidate who says he’ll build bridges.

The Democratic “bridge builders” don’t know the history of their party. When you lose a primary. you shouldn’t take your ball and go home. Doing that is bad enough going out and then supporting a member of the opposite party, calls into question your actual beliefs. When you lose an election, you don’t necessarily lose your integrity.  There is no shame in losing.   The Democrats have had a lot of losers who did not forget their roots.

The following people lost elections and did not take it out on their party.  Here are a few examples. Bob Casey Senior, (1966-1970, 1978) Paul Kanjorski, (1980-1982) Ed Rendell,(1986) Bob Casey Junior (2002) George Brown (2015), Tony Thomas (2019) and Jessica McClay (2019) who lost their races but not their belief in the principles of the Democratic party. As a matter of fact, they all came back to win.

I get the emptiness when you are personally rejected. Being candidate puts your very soul on trial. When all that work goes for naught, you need to vent. “Why me?” you ask. Then you make the hard choices of rebuilding your own bridge or having that sugar high you get when you pull the big reveal. It’s the “I’m telling THEM moment” that after the announcement  fades away as fast as a popsicle on a 90-degree day in summer.

In this very tough political year in these United States, it must be about US, not THEM.

Elbert Hubbard, a publisher who died on the Lusitania once said,  “An ounce of loyalty is worth a pound of cleverness.”

After the initial reaction of many to this “October surprise” many observers of this latest chapter in political “drama” concluded that instead of intending to “build bridges” where they should be built, they would rather burn their bridges. To be honest, it’s been proven that doing so may be a point of no return for this petulant action.