Who will Lohr support for chairman?
This year’s race for Fayette County Commissioner was very interesting. We had six candidates rather than the usual four. We had in order of finish Vincent Vicites, Angela Zimmerlink, David Lohr, Al Ambrosini, Sean Cavanagh, and Jack Cole.
The race for the past 100 years or so usually came down to the two Democrats and one Republican. Not this year, this year the voter’s elected one Democrat, Vince Vicites, and the two Republicans, Angela Zimmerlink and David Lohr.
Before I go into this year’s race details, let me state my total disagreement with guest columnist, Richard Robbins prior column favoring a home rule charter. What he advocates, would silence the minority voice in our county government. “Dissent in government is the highest form of patriotism,” is a quote often attributed to Thomas Jefferson. I agree, dissent in government has a rich history, even in the law you will often have a dissenting opinion in the United States Supreme Court. If you would elect one county chief executive, you would be silencing two additional and vitally important voices.
Next year, the reorganization meeting of the Fayette County Board of Commissioners will be interesting to watch. We, already have the radio appearance by Vincent Vicites where he stated that since he was the top vote-getter he should be the new chairman of the board, and he has been lobbying the courthouse crowd with the same sentiments. The problem with this theory is that Mr. Vicites is the minority on the new board. I distinctly remember in 1996 Mr. Vicites taking the chairmanship with the Republican vote although he was not the top vote-getter that year. So, now the top vote-getter should be chairman?
Republicans, Angela Zimmerlink, and David Lohr are the new Republican majority on the board of commissioners. What should happen is David Lohr should make the motion to name Angela Zimmerlink the new chairwoman of the board of commissioners. I say this because she is the top vote-getter in the majority party, and Mr. Lohr finished behind her. This is what is fair and just. However will something more sinister come to play? Will Mr. Lohr start off the new administration in an acrimonious way? Will he betray his fellow Republicans by voting to give the Chairmanship to the Democrat, Mr. Vicites? Mr. Lohr’s actions will set the tone for the next four years. I know that the leadership of the state Republican Party is watching his next move very closely. I hope he does the right thing.
The very fact that Mr. Lohr, on his fifth attempt was elected is due in part to the unusual dynamics of this race. Independents, Sean Cavanagh, and Jack Cole helped shape this race, although for vastly different reasons. Mr. Cole was making his first step into the political arena. His motives were suspect from the beginning. He switched from a Democrat to Republican, then back to a Democrat, before switching to an Independent. The curious timing was the fact that former commissioner, Sean Cavanagh had switched to an Independent from Democrat to run as an Independent. Mr. Cole perhaps unwittingly was used as a “filler candidate” to take votes away from Sean Cavanagh.
I have been around politics for the better part of 25 years and I could see that Sean Cavanagh was making certain politicians who desire to control your government very uneasy. These certain politicians knew they could not control Sean Cavanagh’s vote on the board of commissioners the way they control Al Ambrosini and Vincent Zapotosky. You have to remember that there is a $30 million budget to control in Fayette County, and the numerous jobs they want their political crony friends and relatives to have. This all happens at you the taxpayers’ expense.
In a desperate attempt to save Ambrosini, these politicians’ resorted to negative attack ads to assassinate the character of Sean Cavanagh. In these ads these spinsters tell have truths in a way to make the target look as bad as possible without telling the whole truth in proper context. Negative ads are proven to drive down the support of the target of the character assassination. However, this did not save Al Ambrosini.
Mr. Ambrosini has to be one of the worst, if not the worst county commissioner that I have seen in my 25 years of attending these meetings. He was often rude to the citizens, condescending in his comments, and he recently called the citizens that opposed his failed prison project “morons” in this very newspaper. Mr. Ambrosini, January cannot come soon enough. You so deservingly got booted from office, yet you still have no humility!
It is well known that the Fayette County Republican Committee voted not to publicly support David Lohr due to his apparent connections to certain Democrat politicians. That being said, Mr. Lohr this is a new day for Fayette County, the rank and file Republicans, and others voted to elect you and Angela Zimmerlink as the new Republican majority on the board of Fayette County Commissioners. Angela was the top vote-getter in the new majority party, will you do the right thing? Mr. Hardy did the right thing and named his fellow Republican, Angela Zimmerlink as chairwoman the last time two Republicans were in the majority. Will you follow his lead?
Michael J. Cavanagh is a resident of Uniontown.