Here’s why I voted for Scott Dunn
Politics are complicated, which helps explain my split-ticket vote last Tuesday for Scott Dunn, a Republican incumbent Fayette County commissioner. Tuesday’s vote certified that Dunn will return to his office at the courthouse, joining two other holdovers, fellow Republican Dave Lohr and veteran Democratic office holder Vince Vicites, for four more years at the head of county government.
Until recently the chances I’d cast a vote for Dunn were just about nil. Then, two things happened.
The first of these is that Democrat Geno Gallo revealed himself to be at best an election muddler, teaming up with the GOP’s Jon Marietta, the “Hillbilly” guy who claimed that widespread voting irregularities in last spring’s primary cost him the contest against Dunn and Lohr.
If I understand correctly what Marietta was trying to impart – and it wasn’t easy, with references to “algorithms” and such other terms that tend to boggle the mind when applied to the centuries’ old American method of selecting the leaders of government – it was this: Just about the entire apparatus of county government was arrayed against the counting of ballots in a fair and forthright manner.
In short, county elections are rigged, and the whole thing needs to be torn down and reassembled to reflect the real will of the people. All of this is hogwash, of course, but election denialism, which translates into democracy denialism, runs deep. Just how deep became much clearer as I listened on my car radio to Gallo expound with Marietta on the topic. This was in mid-October.
Was I hearing correctly? Could this really be the Democrat “Geno” running for county commissioner? Oh, no, it was!
It was then that I got the notion to vote for Dunn, who was the most immediate victim of this fruitiness. It was Dunn, after all, who finished behind Lohr and ahead of Marietta in the spring Republican primary.
(A partial recount of the primary vote – a recount prompted by Marietta – discovered one small discrepancy in the balloting. It turned out that the self-described Hillbilly, the county’s current recorder of deeds, had been credited with one more vote than he actually earned. The result: Instead of making up ground, he fell further behind Lohr and Dunn.)
The second thing that took place is that I read Dunn’s response to questions posed to him by the Herald-Standard about the campaign and his plans for a second four years in office. He began this way:
“The biggest issue facing the county is generational poverty. Poverty affects, and is affected by: blight, crime, unemployment, work force, hunger, addiction, domestic violence, and other social ills.
“The poverty rates,” Dunn continued, “display the direct correlation between poverty and post-secondary education; the more education and training you have the less likely you are to live in poverty, and more probable to live a productive life and positively affect our work force.”
Dunn, I thought, was on to something.
He went on to tell the Herald-Standard that the county needs to do more to “increase [the] education and training” of residents as a means to combat its chronic level of poverty. He put in a plug for community-based after-school mentoring programs, and took note of the scourge of drug addiction, and of addressing the mental and physical health needs of residents.
He talked about the money already spent on broadband expansion, and of expanding the availability of housing “to help attract and retain new residents and businesses.”
This is all serious stuff. Shorn of cheap catch-phrases, campaign double-talk, and political blustering of the kind that is pretty standard fare, Dunn, in responding to the paper, was both coherent and compelling.
It was refreshing to read, a real eye-opener.
Here’s hoping Commissioner Dunn and his colleagues follow through on what he outlined during the campaign. It will be tough, though. These are mostly hard, deeply embedded problems that defy quick and easy solutions. Among the most difficult issues in public life today, they will require sustained effort, and cooperation, assistance, and understanding from many quarters, including from the state and federal governments, and from citizens like you.
A year from now, voter turnout will swell. On Tuesday, 37.9% of Fayette County’s eligible voters came out to the polls, compared with 39.1% in Washington County and 38.6% in Westmoreland. A figure for Greene County was not available.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.