OPINION: Chris Kelly Opinion: Political pests swarm for election
May 16—Political pests are the cicadas of democracy. They lurk beneath the surface and emerge in seasonal swarms to satisfy their carnal desires. They are the brazen, bug-eyed drones of broken ideas and bad habits.
Unseasonably cold spring temperatures have delayed the return of "Brood X," the largest and most widespread cohort of the noisy, sex-crazed supercrickets. Cicadas are annoying, but essentially harmless. They come and go every 17 years and are out of sight, out of mind in the interim.
Political pests operate on shorter cycles and do lasting damage. They burrow deep into government and count on an apathetic electorate to forgive and forget the dirt they do in the dark. Their plaintive mating calls are deafening as we approach the most contentious primary election in recent memory.
More than anything else, memory should drive voters to the polls on Tuesday.
When Brood X last surfaced in Northeast Pennsylvania, Lackawanna County Commissioners Bob Cordaro and A.J. Munchak were sworn in as a new Republican majority devoted to ending patronage politics. Both wound up in prison on public corruption charges. Free now, one is happily retired. The other is a cheerful talk radio host.
As Cordaro and Munchak took office, Scranton slogged into its 12th year as an officially distressed city. Mayor Chris Doherty and Councilwoman Janet Evans began a bitter, 10-year personal war that stymied any hope of recovery and set the stage for Evans ally Bill Courtright to sack City Hall.
Today, Courtright is in prison, the city is still officially distressed, and pests who pine for the patronage politics of the past are appealing to parochialism to oust a progressive mayor for the sin of being born elsewhere.
Seventeen years ago, the Scranton School Board was poised to make several disastrous decisions under the rule of obviously unqualified and predictably corrupt directors and administrators. Today, the district has its first fund balance in 15 years, $57 million in COVID relief funds to spend and a recovery plan the state insists is binding.
The district also remains under the cloud of a seemingly endless state corruption investigation that so far has sent a patsy mechanic to jail and rewarded a corrupt business manager with a $79,000 annual public pension.
Four years without a contract and owed millions in back pay, the teachers union that endorsed the unqualified, corrupt pests of the past is backing a slate of candidates that includes two former directors who promise to unilaterally amend the recovery plan despite the state's ultimate authority.
To that end, the union and its international incarnation are spending buckets of campaign cash to oust the incumbent board president, who pledged to stick with the plan she voted for along with a former director running against her on the union-backed team.
Whatever side prevails, the board's makeup will change. Whether the district's overall direction changes is up to voters whose electoral apathy allowed unqualified and corrupt pests to undermine its financial foundation. As the past 17 years attest, broken ideas and bad habits don't get better with time.
Neither do political pests. Their plaintive mating calls are siren songs promising fresh starts from stale formulas. If memory serves, the votes cast Tuesday will reverberate long after Brood X makes its brief, noisy return. For political pests and the public that pays for the dirt they do, 17 years is an eternity.
Even sex-crazed supercrickets know that.
CHRIS KELLY, the Times-Tribune columnist, urges you to vote on Tuesday. Read his award-winning blog at timestribuneblogs.com/kelly.
Contact the writer:
kellysworld@timesshamrock.com;
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