As of Thursday night, the latest vote count I was able to find for the Burns-Bradley race for the District 72 seat in the Pennsylvania House had reached a reported 53 percent of the total. That’s almost two days after voting ended.
Have they farmed out the vote count to a stereotypical PennDOT road crew, with eight watching for every two actually working?
Too bad Myopia 2025’s plan to slip Afghan immigrants into the area behind the backs of the public was outed and dropped. I’m sure those unskilled newcomers would have worked cheap and counted well.
If the goal of those in charge of the county election process this time was to make Cambria County a statewide and national laughingstock, mission accomplished.
The noon broadcast of Johnstown’s NBC affiliate, which seems to think it’s State College’s NBC affiliate, had an amusing, perhaps Freudian slip. A reporter covering the Burns-Bradley story said a county commissioner was “overlooking” the vote-counting procedure.
I’d think “overseeing” the procedure would be more accurate verbiage. But “overlooking” seems to work, too, in some ways.
The delay in finalizing results is drawing attention because there is a lot at stake here.
Perhaps Cambria County can provide enough votes for declared U.S. Senate victor Dave McCormick to push his lead above the mandatory recount differential.
The control of the state house appears to hinge on whether Frank Burns or Amy Bradley prevails.
Last, but not least, Bradley is the final hope that the Johnstown Woke Gazette might have one high-profile endorsement actually win a race.
The predictably left Johnstown operation where, in the interest of full disclosure, I worked for 20 years or so, had to endorse Democrat Kamala Harris for president and Democrat Bob Casey for Senate, just because they’re Democrats and Donald Trump is a very bad man. McCormick is bad, too, since he backs Trump.
Understand, editorial management seems to think it serves readership more politically aligned with liberal hotbed San Francisco than conservative outposts such as Jacksonville, Fla.
Newsroom staff is similarly mis-aligned politically with the area and there were reports of dour faces among the crew when national election results began pouring in Tuesday night.
Also, they’ve taken to locking the front door of the place, with a sign telling people to knock. I’m guessing they fear that Hitler Trump will come looking for them to exact revenge because he was not endorsed.
Relax, he’s not that kind of guy. More to the point, with a circulation that on a good day challenges 12,000, you’re not exactly a national voice.
That didn’t prevent the publisher from writing an editorial that appeared in the Nov. 2, 2024, edition seeming to imply the local offering was superior to the Washington Post or L.A. Times because it had the courage to endorse candidates, circulation be damned!
How disappointing for this self-proclaimed crusader that Kamala went down in flames to Trump and his MAGA supporters.
Then there was Casey, who had stayed closer to MAGA guy, McCormick, by showing himself to be the consummate, desperate politician that he is. That meant Casey running ads attempting to link himself to Trump on issues of trade and tariffs.
How ironic, since no less a source than the venerable New York Times, in the same Oct. 19, 2024, story outing Casey for his hypocrisy in embracing Trump, noted that Casey “gained prominence for his resistance to many of former President Donald J. Trump’s policies.”
That Casey was and is a political animal, willing to say or do anything to stay in power, was the theme of many McCormick ads. They seem to have worked.
But hypocrisy is no stranger to politics – or endorsements. I’ve received mailers from the Bradley campaign basically accusing Burns of being a stooge of Philadelphia politicians, not showing up for work, and doing nothing to help our area. Bradley’s TV ads don’t have a lot of good things to say about Burns, either. And the bulk of those Bradley ads attacking Burns are said to be on the dime of a Philadelphia backer.
The Woke Gazette people explained their Bradley endorsement was due to the “professional and mature campaigning” method she and Kamala shared. That would be Bradley sharing methodology with Kamala, who called Trump a fascist, a Hitler, and had surrogates, including Joe Biden, calling Trump supporters garbage, racists and misogynists.
If that’s professional and mature, I don’t want to see unprofessional and immature.
Perhaps the Woke Gazette, in the spirit of full disclosure, might have shared that Bradley was aligned with Myopia 2025 on the Afghan plan, as is/was the newspaper. Can it be mere coincidence that the man who held the paper’s publisher title before the current guy, left the media operation in February 2023 to become – wait for it – executive director of Myopia 2025?
Considering that the Woke Gazette’s Nov. 2 piece went to great lengths to rip Trump, it seems more than a bit inconsistent to accept that the “professional and mature” campaign of Bradley included ads making great hay of Trump endorsing her, seemingly during his Johnstown campaign stop.
I’m not sure how someone with a Trump endorsement would be worthy of a Woke Gazette endorsement.
Keep on preaching, Woke Gazette, and indulging in copious amounts of self-congratulation. But be aware, your flock is dwindling with each day.
Sam Ross Jr's site 