The jostling for position amid statewide Republican candidates in Pennsylvania now has one more player in the mix.
Montgomery County Commissioner Joe Gale announced his candidacy for Pennsylvania lieutenant governor Tuesday and did so with an attack from the right on one of the other candidates – Jeff Bartos.
“To this day, Jeff Bartos remains a self-serving political opportunist,” Gale, 28, said in the press release announcing his candidacy. “Don’t believe his current campaign claims that he’s a ‘conservative outsider’ because the facts prove Jeff Bartos is an entrenched insider who has a long history of donating to Democrats.”
On Jan. 6, Bartos announced on Twitter that he had received the endorsement of the Pennsylvania Republican State Committee’s central, northeast and northeast central caucuses. On Jan. 4, he announced he had $849,000 available for his candidacy.
Bartos, a Main Line real estate investor and fundraiser for Republicans, dropped out of the race for the Senate nomination to run against Democratic incumbent Bob Casey Jr. in November and shortly thereafter teamed up with York County Republican state Sen. Scott Wagner’s campaign for governor.
Although the lieutenant governor in Pennsylvania is elected separately from the governor, Bartos and Wagner have taken the unusual step of running as a team.
Wagner is one of four Republicans looking to unseat first-term Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf. The other three are Pennsylvania House Speaker Mike Turzai, Paul Mango, a former paratrooper and businessman, and Laura Ellsworth, a western Pennsylvania attorney.
Two other Republicans are also planning to seek the party nomination for lieutenant governor in the May primary: former state Rep. Gordon Denlinger of Lancaster County, and Otto Voit, a Berks County businessman who ran for state treasurer in 2016.
Gale is not the only area county commissioner to seek the lieutenant governor’s office.
On the other side of the aisle, Chester County Commissioner Kathi Cozzone and Lancaster County Commissioner Craig Lehman are among the five seeking to push incumbent Lt. Gov. Mike Stack off the Democratic ballot in May.
Gale’s candidacy for county commissioner bucked the Montgomery County Republican Party, defeating one of one of the two party-endorsed candidates in the 2015 primary by 1,000 votes and a seat on the commissioners board by winning 3,000 more votes than the endorsed Republican Steve Tolbert.
It is the first elected office he has held.
Gale has taken the same upstart tone in his next foray into Republican politics, calling Bartos a “RINO,” or “Republican In Name Only” and providing a list going back to 2000 of Democrats to whom Bartos and his wife Sheryl have made donations, including donations to former Montgomery County Commissioner and Democrat Josh Shapiro in his successful bid for Pennsylvania Attorney General in 2016.
“Primary voters were inspired by my courage to challenge a flawed ticket that lacked the core conservative values of protecting innocent life and practicing fiscal responsibility,” Gale wrote of his commissioner’s run. “Following my historic primary election win, resentful GOP party bosses at the county and state level colluded to spend over $100,000 in a desperate effort to smear me and defeat me in the November general election.”
Gale also takes affront at what he says was the role Bartos took in that effort, providing an example of a sample Republican ballot Bartos helped fund and which was mailed in 2015 that omitted his Gale’s name.
Attempts to reach Bartos for comment Tuesday were unsuccessful.
“Despite the sabotage efforts of insider Jeff Bartos and his party boss allies, I was elected Montgomery County Commissioner – the first in history to do so without the support of either major political party establishment,” wrote Gale, who also points out he was the first elected official in Pennsylvania to endorse Donald Trump for president.
“Among other things, Donald Trump’s primary and general election victories taught us that the electorate is better at picking winners than establishment insiders,” Gale wrote. “As such, the nominee for Lieutenant Governor was designed to be elected by Pennsylvania’s 3.2 million registered Republican voters, not selected by gubernatorial candidates or GOP deal makers.”
He points to his efforts to keep Planned Parenthood out of Reading High School, his vote against tax and fee hikes in Montgomery County and his efforts to bring “transparency” to county government as qualifications for his candidacy.
“I am both the proven winner Republicans need on the November ticket to defeat Governor Tom Wolf and the proven conservative watchdog Pennsylvanians need to restore common-sense and moral character in Harrisburg,” he wrote in his press release.
According to his campaign website, Gale was “raised in Plymouth Township, he attended schools in the Colonial School District. He is a graduate of Temple University’s Fox School of Business where he earned a degree in finance and Real Estate.”
The Pennsylvania Constitution states that the lieutenant governor must be at least 30 when he or she would be sworn in in January 2019. If he wins, Gale would not be able to serve until March 2019, when he turns 30.