It's election time, and you can hear the silence roar

Intelligencer Journal

Published: Sep 22, 2008
00:00 EST

Lancaster

By DAVE PIDGEON, Staff

Shhhhhhhh. Aside from the presidential campaign, all's quiet in Lancaster County. At a time when a local reporter's e-mail box is usually jammed with messages from various campaigns, there's hardly been anything from the candidates running for state Senate and U.S. Congress.

It's eerily quiet. Maybe we need an all point's bulletin. If you've seen people with "Vote for (INSERT NAME)" buttons and handing out leaflets in your neighborhood, please contact your local political writer.

Republican Lloyd Smucker, who's running for the 13th state Senate seat — the news releases on his Web site are from the spring primary.

His Democratic opponent Jose Urdaneta? Aside from Sunday's volunteer training session, the latest attention-grabbing headline on Urdaneta's Web site is from April.

There are others (Bill Neff, a Republican businessman who lost in the spring primary, is running a write-in campaign for state Senate), and I have no doubt all are knocking on doors, shaking hands, talking to people one on one.

However, there's been an absence of issue-oriented news releases from the campaigns, even as the state Legislature wrangles over critical measures like government reform and health insurance. No press conferences. No memos. Nothing.

Democrat Bruce Slater and Republican Joe Pitts? Hardly a peep from either. Anybody know what they're running for? Anybody know who the third-party candidates are for that race?

This isn't so much a criticism of our various candidates as it is an observation. You can expect the rhetoric and exposure of everyone to get ramped up next month, but compared to previous general elections in Lancaster, there's hardly a murmur of conversation about the local races.

Without doubt, the various campaigns are operating in the shadow of the Barack Obama/John McCain race for president, so it's not easy to gain the attention of the press. In the last week, nearly every news article I've written for the Intelligencer Journal has been about the presidential race.

But it would be nice to hear a little noise from the local candidates, too.

You'll hear them soon
For local political junkies, one of the most anticipated events of general election season is the annual meet-the-candidates night at AMVETS Post 19 in Lancaster.

Unfortunately, this year's event —!\qOct. 19 starting at 5 p.m. — will be the first since the passing of Harold Sommers, who was the catalyst for the event, starting with the first in 1996. Sommers died on May 2 after a bout with cancer.

The event is free and open to the public. The venue is 715 Fairview Ave., and candidates for local, state and national offices are invited to speak.

Quotes of the Week
"John McCain sees job losses as a crisis that demands leadership, but it's clear that Barack Obama sees them as an opportunity to launch political distortions."
— McCain spokesman Paul Lindsay about a recent Obama ad blaming policies McCain supports for the closing of a manufacturing plant in State College four years ago.

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"It's time for everybody to be a little patriotic, man."
— Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden to the Intelligencer Journal about Obama proposals to raise taxes for the wealthiest Americans.

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"Maybe we have finally established once and for all that a woman could be a viable candidate for president for either party. But being a woman is not enough in my view. I judge people by their positions on the issues and their individual qualifications for the position."
— Lois Herr, executive director of the Lancaster County Democratic Committee, about the presidential race, Republican Sarah Palin and how women will vote in Pennsylvania.

E-mail: dpidgeon@lnpnews.com