Forum: Democrats hoping to unseat Scott Perry agree on 1 thing: They all say he has to go

Don and Maggie Brown gave up their Monday evening to drive across the river from their Camp Hill home to the campus of Harrisburg Area Community College to participate in democracy.

It was a candidates’ forum, sponsored by WITF, the York Daily Record, York Dispatch and Pennlive for the six Democrats hoping to unseat Republican incumbent U.S. Rep. Scott Perry.

Don and Maggie cited a number of issues that concerned them and that they wished that their representatives would address. They wanted to set eyes on the candidates, to get a read on their “demeanor and character,” Don said, believing that you can learn more about someone by meeting them in person rather than reading about them on the internet.

But foremost among those issues was the character of a candidate not at the forum, Perry.

“I think he’s a jerk,” Don Brown, retired from the Naval Aviation Service, said. “I know not everybody is going to agree on policy, but I think people conduct themselves with respect.”

The Browns believe Perry went to Washington and fell in with a bad crowd and “it made him a jerk,” Don said. “He’s got blinkers on.”

The Browns spoke between sessions of what was billed as “A Candidates’ Night to Listen" in HACC's Rose Lehrman Arts Center. The evening began with the candidates sitting in on focus groups describing the issues that are important to them. Then, they gathered in the auditorium of the arts center, with the candidates answering questions about what came up during those sessions.

The candidates – John Broadhurst, Rick Coplen, Shamaine Daniels, Blake Lynch, Mike O’Brien and Janelle Stelson – all agreed on one point, one that garnered a large consensus in the focus groups.

“Everybody in the room,” Coplen said, “was absolutely concerned about the same thing – Scott Perry’s got to go.”

Lynch cited the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, something prompted by denial of the 2020 election by former President Donald Trump and a group in Congress that includes Perry. “That man tried to take your and my votes away,” he said. “Scott Perry didn’t give a damn about our (police) officers, and he didn’t give a damn about your vote.”

Daniels also cited the integrity of elections, and Perry's role in questioning it, as a key issue. "How stable our election system is how strong our democracy is," she said, joining the others in pledging support of the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, now stalled in Congress.

Perry had been invited to the forum but declined. The night was left to his potential Democratic opponents who will face off in the April 23 primary.

The crowd was decidedly partisan, a show of hands indicated that most of the crowd identified as Democrats or liberals. One person raised his hand when the crowd was asked whether any conservatives were in attendance.

During the focus group sessions, the candidates sat in classrooms on the arts center’s second floor and met with small groups of voters, listening as they described their concerns and the issues that mattered to them. They brought up immigration reform, health care and prescription drug costs, gun violence and safety, the war in Gaza (described by one woman as “genocide”) and U.S. support of Israel, women’s reproductive rights, climate change, the national debt and other issues.

Previously about Perry: Scott Perry calls for cancellation of Biden State of the Union Address over border issues

A veteran's tale: York Vietnam vet's haunting, powerful sculpture reflects the horrors he experienced in war

Paramount among many of the voters, though, was preserving democracy, something they believed that Perry opposed as evidenced by his vote against certifying the 2020 presidential election results and his support of Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the vote.

When asked what attributes they believed their representative should have, people used the words “wisdom,” “intelligence,” “character,” “integrity” and “fortitude” and that the person should be “personable” and “represent the people, not themselves or their party.” They also said the person should be able to “stand up and say what’s right” and “can compromise” and not be “dogmatic” and debate issues based on facts and not “generalized fantasy.” The implication was that these were characteristics Perry lacks. Prospective voters cited Perry's election denial in 2020 and his ongoing legal issues surrounding his participation in Trump's efforts to overturn the election and his membership and leadership position in the partisan conservative House Freedom Caucus.

Following the focus groups, the candidates took the stage in the auditorium and addressed the issues attendees raised.

They all agreed that the primary issue was the preservation of democracy. “Democracy is on the ballot,” Lynch said.

O'Brien, citing his experience as a 20-year Marine Corps veteran, serving to protect democracy overseas, said this election is about "the future of our democracy and the health of our democracy." He pledged to build a bipartisan coalition that "works from the middle out, not the outside in."

Broadhurst went as far as to say that people he has spoken to expressed worry that our political system was on the verge of collapse and compared the political atmosphere in the United States to that of the “Weimar Republic in the 1930s” which led to the rise of Adolf Hitler.

The candidates believe that Perry is anti-democratic and that he doesn’t represent the interests of his constituents. Stelson, a former WGAL-TV anchor and former Republican, said, “Scott Perry has had 12 years to make our lives better. He has done nothing but vote against us.”

Fixing what the candidates described as a broken system, Coplen said, will “be easier because we won’t have to work with Scott Perry.”

In the end, Broadhurst said, “This election is about Scott Perry. It’s about us.”

He said, “We can’t win this election simply by painting Scott Perry and Donald Trump as the boogeyman.” He said the candidates have to look forward and promote positive policies if they hope to unseat the six-term incumbent.

Citing a sports metaphor, he said, “You need to be a good pitcher. You can’t throw the same pitch every time.”

Columnist/reporter Mike Argento has been a York Daily Record staffer since 1982. Reach him at mike@ydr.com.

Watch the forum recording in this livestream by Pennlive:

Congressional candidates forum from PennLive on Vimeo.

This article originally appeared on York Daily Record: Democratic candidates say election is about who can beat Scott Perry