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How Allentown mayoral challengers failed to mobilize the support they needed to unseat Ray O’Connell

In theory, Allentown Interim Mayor Ray O’Connell was a candidate vulnerable to a primary challenge.After all, here’s an unelected rookie who raised property taxes 27% during his first year in office, and whose previous service on City Council overlapped considerably with an administration led by Ed Pawlowski, a man now in federal prison on pay-to-play convictions. Fair characterization or not, the political opportunity to paint it was there.Yet on Tuesday O’Connell walloped three Democratic opponents amid ghost-town voter turnout in nearly every corner of the city to secure the Democratic nomination for the remainder of Pawlowski’s two-year term.Complete but unofficial results show that O’Connell, a 69-year-old retired Allentown School District administrator, won about 2,600 votes, or 53% of all mayoral ballots cast. His closest competitor, school board member Cheryl Johnson Watts, finished more than 28 points behind, with about 1,200 votes.Patrick Palmer got 641 votes, and Michael Daniels got 457 votes.Voter apathy, the relatively low name recognition of O’Connell’s challengers and their reluctance to explicitly take him to task for the large tax increase all were factors that likely contributed to the blowout.Overall Democratic turnout was an anemic 12%. According to unofficial results, fewer than 5,000 of the 41,760 registered Democrats cast ballots. That’s little better than the 9.6% of voters who participated in a 2013 primary in which Pawlowski ran unopposed.Two years ago, when Pawlowski edged O’Connell and five other candidates in the Democratic primary, turnout was about 15%.Participation on Tuesday was especially low in Center City’s heavily minority districts. Less than 8% of voters came out across the city’s first 10 wards, where the three challengers — all candidates of color — seemingly had an opportunity to gain ground on O’Connell. In 2017, Pawlowski overcame O’Connell’s strong performance on the more affluent West End by dominating Center City and the East Side.O’Connell again locked down the West End, beating Johnson Watts by 49 points in the 17th and 18th wards, where turnout exceeded 27%.But he also beat Johnson Watts by 17 points in Center City and 26 points in East Side, where turnout was around 11%. And O’Connell won by 21 points in South Allentown’s three wards, where turnout was around 12%.At Johnson Watts’ home precinct in the 11th Ward, O’Connell secured twice as many votes.Reached by phone Wednesday morning, Johnson Watts called the primary results a “wonderful illustration of where we are as a city” and “very clear as to what people will and will not do in terms of change.”She declined to elaborate, saying she needed time to organize her thoughts. Palmer did not respond to a request for comment.Republican Tim Ramos, whom O’Connell will face in the general election, said Johnson Watts, Palmer and Daniels should have gone after O’Connell more aggressively for the property tax hike. Ramos said he also plans to call attention to what he considers policy failures and governance issues occurring while O’Connell served on council from 2010 until his mayoral appointment in March 2018.“There’s a whole decade of issues we can talk about, but I think among the other candidates there was a lack of understanding those issues and a feeling that you’re going negative and trashing him as an individual if you make any kind of criticism,” Ramos said.O’Connell’s opponents also raised and spent minuscule campaign funds compared to candidates in past years.From the beginning of the year to May 6, Johnson Watts’ political committee spent just over $1,500 on her campaign. Palmer spent about $2,500.In 2017, Democrat Charlie Thiel spent more than $100,000 on a bid that landed him in third place. Pawlowski spent $85,000, and O’Connell spent $13,400, twice as much than what he spent this year. Competitive mayoral candidates in recent years typically have spent more than $10,000 during the primary. Pawlowski spent $105,000 during the 2013 uncontested race, and $95,000 in a 2009 race.Some former big donors have sat out city races following Pawlowski’s indictment.Johnson Watts rejected the idea that money issues hampered her campaign. She said she could have raised more funds by being less discerning in accepting contributions.Johnson Watts, a former financial adviser elected to school board in late 2017, had the most political experience of any of the challengers. She promised to dedicate her two-year term to better understanding the city’s true financial health and then communicating the issues to city residents from all walks of life.O’Connell ran a front-runner campaign. He did not criticize his foes, and they rarely criticized him.Instead he stuck to a feel-good script about prioritizing public safety, economic development and a general commitment to improving the lives of city families. If the tax hike came up, he rattled off statistics about the structural deficit and declining cash reserves the city faced, and argued the only alternative was cutting public services.He rarely got pushback from other candidates when casting himself as the fixer of Pawlowski’s financial mismanagement.The tax hike “was a difficult decision, but it was the right decision,” he reiterated this week. It was the city’s first property tax hike in 13 years.Candida Affa, a councilwoman who on Tuesday secured a nomination for a second term despite supporting O’Connell’s tax hike, said the issue almost never came up when she spoke to residents during the primary campaign.“I would mention it more than they would so I could demonstrate my support for public safety,” she said.Ramos, who ran unsuccessfully for school board in 2015 and has worked on multiple unsuccessful campaigns for his brother, Steven Ramos, empathized with the Democratic challengers’ failure to motivate voters in Center City and elsewhere.But he vowed to work harder to overcome voter apathy, and describes himself as a candidate “above party politics” and palatable to residents from all walks of life.Ramos faces steep odds in his race against O’Connell. Of the city’s 67,000 registered voters, about 18.5% are Republican.Morning Call reporter Andrew Wagaman can be reached at 610-820-6764 or awagaman@mcall.com
Source: Morningcall

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