The Lehigh County Republican Establishment Team

My blogging intern, Michael Molovinsky, touched on the hypocrisy of whatever Team the Republican Commissioner candidates are running as on Tuesday. He made his points well, but I think no point is fully made until it is driven home with a sledge hammer. They may call themselves the Reform Team or the Results Team. What they really are is the Establishment Team. For from being a grass roots effort, they are a toy being played by gazillionaires Wayne Woodman and Lisa Schiller. When they get tired enough, they'll move back to California.

Their original Messiah, Scott Ott, has already fled the Lehigh Valley. He left town after losing the Exec race twice  - once to to pagan Don Cunningham, and later, to infidel Tom Muller. Huckster that Ott is, he's established a GoFundMe account so that he and his family can spend a week this summer in Costa Rica, pretending to love Jebus. He's looking for 8 large.

The Establishment Team

While waiting for the Second Coming of Scrappleface, the remaining Establishment Republicans needed someone to replace Ott on the Board and selected Amanda Holt, a home-schooled piano teacher who lives with her mommy and daddy. Amazingly, she's running for election.

So is Brad Osborne, who ran as a moderate four years ago but now is one of the Establishment Republicans. Here's what Vic Mazziotti, another Establishment Republican, said about Osborne when he failed to inform fellow Republicans that then Exec Bill Hansell was going to veto a Budget they had just approved. "Osborne claimed he was fiercely independent," said Mazziotti. "What I've found is that he is fiercely indecisive, and that is one of his better points." Osborne quickly flocked to the Establishment Republican banner and became a Benedict Arnold to the rest. He voted to appoint Amanda Holt as Ott's successor after promising others he'd never support one of the Establishment Republicans. He is now a Wayne Woodman toadie.

Lisa Scheller, Wayne's wife, decided against seeking re-election. She's actually an attractive woman and a good, albeit conservative, Commissioner. Her loss is a shame. He husband, Wayne Woodman, recruited Olympian Marty Nothstein to replace her on the ballot. Now Marty knows all about recovery drinks and bicycles, but doesn't know a damn thing about county government. But because he's an Olympian who can blow thunderbolts out his ass, he'll probably be top vote getter.

The fourth member of this team, Vic Mazziotti, is a man I deeply respect and admire. Though I consider him one of the most intelligent people I know, he's under Wayne Woodman's spell. He only wanted to serve one term, but was persuaded to run again to keep Dean Browning, the man they all love to hate, off the ballot.

The Establishment Team's Money

In a story published in The Morning Call, Woodman insists he's an outsider who simply helps little guys who would never stand a chance but for his beneficence. What seems to have slipped his mind is that he was the frickin' at the time he financed most of these campaigns. He is the Establishment, right down to his elephant underpants.

Crony capitalists like Allentown Mayor Edwin "Fed Ed" Pawlowski and J.B. Reilly have been pigs in the way they've bought Democratic candidates in Allentown. But on the County level, campaign spending has grown exponentially in large part because of the husband and wife team of Wayne Woodman and Lidsa Scheller. Over the past four years, they've spent $211,450 to get control of five Commissioner seats and the County Executive's office.

This year, they've kicked in $42,000 for the election of their Establishment Team.

2015 Election Spending by Woodman, Scheller



They can say "free speech," but this is the kind of speech that drowns out every other voice.

The Establishment Team's Hypocrisy

While they are perfectly willing to accept the free speech of Wayne Woodman and Lisa Scheller, they have circulated flyers  hypocritically condemning Democratic Commissioner candidates for doing what they are doing. They are attempting to muddy them up over Fed Ed and Miked Fleck. Michael Molovinsky rejects that argument convincingly. "While the ethics of Pawlowski are certainly fair game for a discussion of City Council and school board candidates, whose decisions interact with the city, those questions are not relevant to the election of county commissioners."

Molovinsky is endorsing Dan Hartzell, a Democrat and The Morning Call's former Road Warrior. I will endorse Hartzell, Joanne Jackson, and Vic Mazziotti, who courageously took aim at pay-to-play with Joanne Eichenwald.