In a huge upset, Bangor Mayor John Brown defeated Bethlehem Mayor John Callahan for Northampton County executive.
As of 10:17pm, with 85% of precincts reporting, Brown had 53% of the vote to Callahan’s 47%.
Callahan immensely outraised his opponent through the entire campaign, and as sitting mayor of Bethlehem, had greater name recognition than Republican opponent Mayor John Brown of the Borough of Bangor. Bangor is a small municipality in the northern portion of Northampton County. That mayoral position is part time, and is only responsible for the oversight of the police force.
Brown received help late in the campaign from the State Republican Party that enabled him to produce a negative TV spot and print a large quantity of mailers for the county.
The upset will hurt Callahan’s political future; many had mentioned him as a potential candidate for higher office he would run again for Congress (he ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 2010).
There had also been rumors of a potential gubernatorial bid down the line. His term as Bethlehem mayor will end in January, when mayor-elect Democrat Bob Donchez takes the position.
Northampton County Council also was swept by Republicans; none of the Democratic candidates won a seat. The five winners were Peg Ferraro, Glenn Geisinger, Seth Vaughan, Hayden Phillips and Matthew Benol.
3 Responses
This is an excellent example of why one should never assume the election is in the bag – perhaps if Mr. Callahan had not taken August and September off and had, instead, actually campaigned, the results would be different.
Nice to see the Norco Republicans back to their winning ways after righting their ship following the short disastrous, narcissistic, and misogynistic chairmanship of Robert Kerr.
Northampton county have vote to be insane tonight