Art Halvorson announced the appointment of two high-ranking campaign staffers yesterday.
Joe Sterns will serve as his campaign manager while Greg Scandlen will be communications and research director.
“I’m very pleased to welcome these two outstanding professionals onto the team,” Halvorson said. “They are as committed as I am to ending business as usual in Washington through providing sincere, conservative representation for our leadership in Washington.”
Sterns previously worked for Senator Pat Toomey and was named as one of the best county chairs by PoliticsPA in 2011. Scandlen is a former Cato Institute policy analyst.
Halvorson is running against Congressman Bill Shuster in the Republican primary for the second consecutive election cycle.
The 9th district consists of all or parts of Bedford, Blair, Cambria, Fayette, Franklin, Fulton, Greene, Huntingdon, Indiana, Somerset, Washington and Westmoreland Counties.
23 Responses
In the year of the outsider, Art Halvorson, a principled, down to earth, grassroots conservative, is more than viable in this, the most Republican district in Pennsylvania.
Joe Sterns is reliable.
David – You Dems kill me. You’re like the team that perpetually gets beaten at the game, then blames the umpire. It’s never that your ideas, while well intentioned, are stale and unsustainable, but rather that the only “logical” explanation to the public rejecting them, must be that the rules of the game aren’t fair.
Before you go there – and I know you’re about to – please spare us the Tom Wolf won overwhelmingly garbage. It’s insulting to try and sell that loss as anything other than Tom Corbett was perhaps the worst politician that has ever served in PA. All politics are local and most local politicians are Republican in Pennsylvania because that’s most reflective of the public.
Jimmy-
You left out the gerrymandering, which has corrupted the system. There are now plenty of programs that can draw districts in fair/non-partisan ways, using only census figures, local township/precinct boundaries, and taking into account rivers/natural features, without using any voter registration data.
Let’s redraw the entire state fairly, and see how long the politicians last in their jobs.
@jmarshak You’ve clearly missed my point, and have a fundamental misunderstanding of our current system. Let me educate you. We our system currently operates exactly how I described. Bill Shuster is not a dictator or a king, he is elected every two years with overwhelming margins. Simply because you candidate doesn’t win, doesn’t mean the other team cheats. Your opinion of who should represent the 9th is simply not anywhere even close to reflective of the will of the people. Be a big boy and accept that. Don’t try to use cheap unfounded political attacks to make the situation something that it is not.
Jimmy- that works if the people you elect are honorable enough to serve a few terms and then return to private life. Unfortunately, there are families out there like the Kennedys and the Shusters who think that elected office is a lifetime job. They hang around so long that they start to think it’s OK for them to do things like have affairs with lobbyists or kill people while driving drunk, and they even convince some of their constituents that it’s OK too.
@GulagPittsburgh I totally agree. I have a plan that I think would work. We should require all members of the House to run for office every 2 years. That way the voters would get to choose who they want to represent them. What do you think? It’s so crazy, it just might work.
Sterns has a history of losing elections. This will be another in a long list of failures.
End all hereditary politicians; it is unAmerican.
Shuster’s Dad, who was originally a carpet-bagging opportunist, learned pretty quickly that he had to earn the trust of the voter to actually win elections. Bud campaigned the hard way, township after township, day after day, for his first two elections in the 1970s.
Bill Shuster, his hedonist sloth son, simply inherited the seat, and has never lifted a finger to reach out to anyone. His political consultants deliver the message, while Bill hangs out in his favorite French bistro in Manhattan with his transport lobbyist girlfriend.
Hmm… Lots of names on this thread that have never been seen on PoliticsPA before, and all of them are pro-Shuster. Bill and his buddies must be scared.
The only experience Halvorson has is lying to the voters who are actually from here
Is Sterns cutting out of Schuylkill because someone in his house has been naughty?
Bills out. Arts in.
And just like that, the Gravis Marketing poll from a month or so ago makes sense.
Joe Sterns? Best joke heard all day.
Why should people who ran a failed senate campaign have any authority in a congressional race. Go drink with your bar assoc. Buddies, maybe they can help you actually win a county judicial seat next time. Daddies coattails couldn’t cut it.. now back to discussing this loser Halvorsen..
I see a RINO troll supporting Shuster. Typical HACK who can’t decide if he’s a real conservative or not.
I see he can afford a good staff now with all the money from those farm subsides that he is “against.” How many times do people have to waste money against Shuster to understand HE is what the voters want. Just go back to Iowa or Bedford or wherever it is you’re from this week.
Rep primary-
What good has Shuster’s chairmanship done for us? Pennsylvania still has the worst roads and bridges in the country. Maybe things would be better if Bill wasn’t so preoccupied with his lobbyist girlfriend.
A word to the wise.. if you want to beat Shuster.. surrounding yourself with Chambersburg’s incompetent mayor and a white supremacy advocational from Mercersburg is a bad look.
Gleason will never leave until conservatives run well financed campaigns.
We have a pennsylvanian in a strong chairmanship. Lets kick him out so the whole state suffers. I hate transportation dollars.
There is only 3 months to go what is going on?
This should have been done months ago. Also how can you beat Shuster with no money?