Lou Barletta might run for Congress.  Or maybe he won’t.  He probably won’t run for Lt. Governor.  And he might stay on as Mayor of Hazleton.  Barletta, it seems, is keeping all of his options open.  In the meantime, however, all we can do is speculate about Barletta’s aspirations for higher office.

Local blogger Gort42 recently caught up with Mayor Barletta and asked him a few questions about his political future….

The last time I talked to you, I got the impression you were running for Lt. Governor.  What happened to that?

“I want to be in a position to affect change and that is not an office that would let me do that.”

Are you going to run for Congress again?

“I haven’t ruled it out and I’m very seriously looking at the race.”

Has your Congressional campaign committee raised any money this quarter?

“Very little, just trying to retire the debt.”

When I talked to you in your office last January it was obvious that you love being the Mayor of Hazelton.

“Staying Mayor is not out of the question.”

So, it would seem that Mayor Barletta hasn’t made up his mind yet.  Or perhaps he has and just isn’t ready to announce it, yet.  The fact that Barletta says that he has done “very little” fund raising so far and is only looking to get rid of existing debt, I think, is very telling.  If Barletta were seriously considering running for Congress, wouldn’t he be actively raising funds?  Also, Barletta has always had a hard time raising money, so it’s not like he can just go out and raise a few hundred thousand dollars at the drop of a hat.  If Barletta doesn’t begin actively raising campaign funds soon, it can probably be assumed that he will not be running for Congress.

What’s worse for Barletta is that if he does decide to run, he will have an opponent in the GOP Primary.  Chris Paige, a Republican out of Skytop, PA, has announced that he will be running in the election and has already come out firing against Barletta.  This means, unlike last year, Barletta will have to not only fight (and spend money) in the General Election, but also in the Primary.  Considering Barletta’s ineptness at fund raising and his existing debt from his previous campaigns, Barletta will surely face an uphill battle if he does decide to run for Congress.

And that, in my opinion, is as it should be.  Barletta has proven, repeatedly, that he is unfit to serve in the US Congress.  He has drilled the city of Hazleton into the dirt.  He has been endorsed by convicted drug dealers and members of the KKK.  And he has used his stump issue of illegal immigration to mask the fact that he has no positions on any other major issue.  Lou Barletta is undeserving to represent the Republican Party or the people of the 11th Congressional District.  He would be well advised to keep his current job in Hazleton.

See also: Who is Chris Paige?

-Dan Cheek
www.StopLouBarletta.com
StopLouBarletta@gmail.com

Post from: StopLouBarletta

Will Lou Barletta Run?

Going into this race, everyone knew it would be close.  Mayor Barletta was, for quite a while, running ahead in most polls.  In September and October, Paul Kanjorski was able to close the gap, some.  Still, Barletta and his supporters all thought that he would be the one Republican candidate that would be able to go against the grain and actually unseat a Democratic congressman.  In the end, that hope evaporated into nothingness.

The way I see it, there were several factors that led to Mayor Barletta loosing a race that many (most?) people thought he should be able to win.  They are:

• Record voter turnout.  All across the nation, voter turnout was at all time highs.  Many of these voters were first time voters and, for the most part, they were not coming out to support the Republican ticket.  I believe that the polls leading up to this election, which showed Barletta slightly ahead, failed to take this into consideration.  The sample sizes they used to generate the results were probably too small.
• Anti-Republican sentiment.  It’s no secret that having a (R) listed next to your name on the ballot was a kiss of death, this election cycle.  While Barletta had been hoping that his popular anti-illegal immigration policies would be enough to counter this, that was simply not the case at all.  Barletta is a Republican (much to my dismay) and that, no doubt, cost him more than a few votes (to my elation).
• Huge financial shortcoming.  According to the Federal Election Commission (FEC), Barletta was always at a huge disadvantage, in terms of money.  According to the FEC: Paul Kanjorski spent over $2 million and still has almost a million dollars in cash and zero debt.  Compare that with Mayor Barletta, who spent less than a million dollars, has just over $100,000 cash and has racked up over $300,000 in debt.  With numbers like that, even in a pro-Republican environment, it would have been hard for Barletta to mount a successful attack on Kanjorski.
• Poor campaign management.  Barletta’s campaign manager was Vince Galko, a Republican operative who has a long history of loosing races for Republican candidates.  Mr. Galko worked on President Bush’s 2004 PA campaign (Bush lost PA that year), Senator Rick Santorum’s last election (Santorum lost to Bob Casey, Jr.), and Rudy Giulliani’s presidential campaign (which was one of the worst run campaigns in the history of American politics).  With help like that, Barletta really didn’t even need to be running against anyone to still pull out a loss.
• Poor understanding of the economy.  Many analysts credit the economic crisis for helping put Barack Obama over the top.  People believed that Obama was better able to deal with the crisis compared with McCain.  Similarly, Lou Barletta did nothing to prove to voters that he knew anything about the economy.  The city that he governs, Hazleton, is wracked with debt (most of which a direct result of Lou Barletta) and Barletta tried to blame the entire financial crisis on Paul Kanjorski, implying that by electing Barletta, the whole situation would simply reverse course.

All of this, I think, resulted in Mayor Barletta loosing the race.  Some of these factors were outside his sphere of control, but many of them were not.  As I’ve said since I put this site online in April, Lou Barletta is a poor candidate.  His flaws are many and his upside is almost non-existent.  If the Republican Party wants to have a shot in Hell at retaking the US Congress, we need to produce candidates who are electable.  In other words, the exact opposite of Mayor Lou Barletta.

-Dan Cheek
www.StopLouBarletta.com
StopLouBarletta@gmail.com

Post from: StopLouBarletta

Why Lou Barletta Lost

The votes are in and I am very, very pleased to say that Mayor Lou Barletta of Hazleton will be keeping his job as mayor and will NOT be moving on to the halls of the United States Congress.  For months, Mayor Barletta waged a political campaign that has relied upon lies, misinformation, and scare tactics.  He refused to take stands on real, important issues.  In the end, the voters of Pennsylvania’s 11th Congressional District saw Mayor Barletta for what he truly is: A narrow minded politician who lacked any real leadership skills or intelligent ideas for moving this country forward.

As a Republican, I would have liked to see a Republican take Kanjorski’s place, assuming that the person was someone worthy of representing both the people of the 11th Congressional District and the Republican Party in the United States Congress.  Clearly, Lou Barletta was not that type of person.  He has a proven track record of failure and during his tenure as the mayor of Hazleton, has drilled that city so far into the ground that it will take years to recover from his blundered leadership.

According to the Associated Press, Paul Kanjorski won the election by getting 140,119 votes to Mayor Barletta’s 130,649.  This election was one of the most exciting and closest elections in the country.  Lou Barletta came close to obtaining the title of “Congressman”, but, for the second time, came up short.  I can honestly say that both the country and the Republican Party is all the better for it.  Had Mayor Barletta been elevated to the rank of Congressman, he would have almost certainly have embarrassed both.

It’s getting late so I’ll end this post here.  In the coming days, I’ll post some final thoughts on Mayor Barletta and my plans for the future of this site.  I would like to thank everyone who has helped make this site as successful as it has been.  Thank you to all of the bloggers who linked to this site.  Thank you for all of the people who emailed me and left comments.  Regardless of whether or not you agreed with me, I always respected your opinions and was glad to hear from all of you.

Lou Barletta has been stopped and that, I think, is a very good thing indeed.  Good night, all.

-Dan Cheek
www.StopLouBarletta.com
StopLouBarletta@gmail.com

**Update 5 November 2008 7:10am**
Here is a video of Paul Kanjorski talking about his victory and where both he and Mayor Barletta stand going forward:

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Post from: StopLouBarletta

Lou Barletta Has Been Stopped