(no subject)
May. 17th, 2006 01:22 amFolks serving in the Pennsylvania legislature usually serve until they retire or are convicted. Pennsylvanians, particularly Pennsylvanians where I live, have not historically voted their leaders out of office. That would be why Representative Bud Shuster served long enough to rise to chairman of the House Transportation Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives. (It'd also be why we have several highways and bypasses and so forth locally named after the man. Oink, oink!) Anyway, folks in these parts do not generally get a hair up their collective ass and decide to unelect a politician who has served for a long and mostly loyal career, long enough to rise to a position of some power in the government hirearchy. Generally.
State Senator Robert Jubelirer served Pennsylvania's 30th district since approximately the end of the Nixon administration (he's not a young guy). The last time that Senator Jubelirer faced an opponent in a primary election, I was eight years old. I am now thirty-six.
Since this region of the state is not going to elect a democrat to the state senate until all the republican candidates are, y'know, satanic dead gay wax puppets run by French Islamic sheep-fucking extremists, the republican candidate who wins the primary is GOING to win the November election. That's just the way it is around here. (Democrats can sometimes win office if they're reasonably popular. Bob Casey, Jr. has a good shot at taking the U.S. Senate seat from that asshole Santorum. I'm voting for Casey even if he does fuck sheep. At least he doesn't spend his time in office making bigoted remarks about homosexuals that make the entire rest of the fucking country (except for Backwater, Arkansas) think we're a bunch of fucking morons over here.)
Anyway, if you're the incumbent republican candidate, unopposed in the primary, you are GOING to get re-elected. Usually. Most of the time. If you're the incumbent republican candidate and you're being opposed in the primary, it's usually because someone is mad at you, possibly a group of someones... but even so, usually you will still be re-elected because it's kind of tough to piss off your whole entire district at one time. Usually. Generally. Most of the time. I mean, you would think that pissing off everyone at the same time would be kind of the same as pleasing everyone at the same time... but this is not the case. Turns out that you can piss off everyone at the same time.
Senator Jubelirer managed to seriously piss off a group of fairly solid, stolid, religious, conservative, not-rich, Republican voters from the empty space on the map about halfway between Harrisburg and Pittsburgh. What he did was the midnight pay raise thing with unvouchered expenses.
What we did was vote his fucking ass out of office.
Results with all 209 precincts reporting in...
Eichelberger: 15158
Jubelirer: 12343
McClure: 7038
Note that there were three guys running. McClure was another "I am not Jubelirer" candidate. Without the third guy to draw some of the fire, Jubelirer would likely have fallen further behind.
Senator Jubelirer, just because we generally don't do it doesn' t mean we can't. We can. We did.
State Senator Robert Jubelirer served Pennsylvania's 30th district since approximately the end of the Nixon administration (he's not a young guy). The last time that Senator Jubelirer faced an opponent in a primary election, I was eight years old. I am now thirty-six.
Since this region of the state is not going to elect a democrat to the state senate until all the republican candidates are, y'know, satanic dead gay wax puppets run by French Islamic sheep-fucking extremists, the republican candidate who wins the primary is GOING to win the November election. That's just the way it is around here. (Democrats can sometimes win office if they're reasonably popular. Bob Casey, Jr. has a good shot at taking the U.S. Senate seat from that asshole Santorum. I'm voting for Casey even if he does fuck sheep. At least he doesn't spend his time in office making bigoted remarks about homosexuals that make the entire rest of the fucking country (except for Backwater, Arkansas) think we're a bunch of fucking morons over here.)
Anyway, if you're the incumbent republican candidate, unopposed in the primary, you are GOING to get re-elected. Usually. Most of the time. If you're the incumbent republican candidate and you're being opposed in the primary, it's usually because someone is mad at you, possibly a group of someones... but even so, usually you will still be re-elected because it's kind of tough to piss off your whole entire district at one time. Usually. Generally. Most of the time. I mean, you would think that pissing off everyone at the same time would be kind of the same as pleasing everyone at the same time... but this is not the case. Turns out that you can piss off everyone at the same time.
Senator Jubelirer managed to seriously piss off a group of fairly solid, stolid, religious, conservative, not-rich, Republican voters from the empty space on the map about halfway between Harrisburg and Pittsburgh. What he did was the midnight pay raise thing with unvouchered expenses.
What we did was vote his fucking ass out of office.
Results with all 209 precincts reporting in...
Eichelberger: 15158
Jubelirer: 12343
McClure: 7038
Note that there were three guys running. McClure was another "I am not Jubelirer" candidate. Without the third guy to draw some of the fire, Jubelirer would likely have fallen further behind.
Senator Jubelirer, just because we generally don't do it doesn' t mean we can't. We can. We did.