By Charles Malinchak, for Armchair Lehigh Valley<\/p>\n
A new political action committee, chaired by a vending company owner who opposes state Gaming Control Board oversight of skill games, mailed a flier to voters in Bucks and Lehigh counties calling Democrat Bradley Merkl-Gump, a candidate in the 16th Senate District, \u201ca party boss puppet.\u201d<\/p>\n
Protecting Our Democracy registered with the state as a PAC on April 15 and is chaired by Joseph Calla, owner of Capital Vending Co. in Harrisburg, which supplies coin-operated amusement devices used in skill games. Its first campaign finance report isn\u2019t due until May 8.<\/p>\n
Merkl-Gump is a teacher who also serves on the Pennridge School Board. He is running against Lehigh County Controller Mark Pinsley in the Democratic primary in the 16th<\/a>, which includes western Lehigh County and Upper Bucks.<\/p>\n The seat is held by Republican Jarrett Coleman, who is unchallenged in the May 19 primary election. Coleman is opposed to taxing skill games, saying in a July\u00a0op-ed<\/a>\u00a0that such a levy would financially hurt social clubs that serve veterans.<\/p>\n Coleman\u2019s campaign committee\u00a0received $395,000\u00a0from executives from Pace-O-Matic, the state\u2019s leading provider of skill game terminals, and a political action committee affiliated with the company called Operators for Skill PAC.<\/p>\n Calla is listed as having donated $156,000 to Operators for Skill PAC, according to\u00a0Transparency USA,\u00a0an organization that tracks political contributions.\u00a0Douglas Rickards\u00a0of Harrisburg is listed as the treasurer for Protecting Our Democracy and Operators for Skill.<\/p>\n Skill games are found in social clubs, bars and convenience stores. More similar to video games than slot machines, they are unregulated and untaxed in Pennsylvania. Like slot machines, however, players can win cash prizes.<\/p>\n It\u2019s unclear why Protecting Our Democracy was created and why Merkl-Gump is being targeted with fliers. Messages left on the phone number listed on the state site as the contact for the PAC were not returned.<\/p>\n In a Jan. 14 opinion piece in PennLive<\/a>, Calla said he and others in the industry, including Pace-O-Matic, have sought clear, fair regulation and taxation with oversight going to the state Department of Revenue, not the state Gaming Control Board.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have met with lawmakers, testified at hearings, written letters and explained repeatedly what workable oversight should look like. Unfortunately, some elected officials simply refuse to listen,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n He said the Gaming Control Board \u201chas a long history of opposing the skill game industry. No industry can thrive under a regulator that actively works against it,\u2019\u2019 Calla wrote.<\/p>\n Merkl-Gump said he doesn\u2019t know why people connected to the skill games industry are targeting him.<\/p>\n \u201cI have never taken a position on skill games because I am a school board director,\u2019\u2019 he told Armchair Lehigh Valley in an email.<\/p>\n Kevin Foster, who is part of Merkl-Gump\u2019s campaign team, speculated, \u201cProbably because they fund Jarrett Coleman and they believe Bradley is a stronger general election opponent than Pinsley and they\u2019d rather face Mark.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n Pinsley lost to Coleman in 2022, and to his predecessor, Republican Pat Browne, in 2018.<\/p>\n In response, Pinsley said via email: \u201cThe Republicans are chaos agents. If they were really worried about who can beat Jarrett Coleman, they\u2019d be looking at the candidate who has been elected three times, won countywide twice, and was the second highest vote getter in a contested Lehigh County race in 2023.\u201d<\/p>\n Pinsley has been elected controller twice, and previously was elected to the South Whitehall Township Board of Commissioners. He received 39,858 votes in his 2023 reelection bid to the controller position, defeating Republican Robert Smith Jr. Only Coroner Daniel A. Buglio received more votes in a contested Lehigh County race in that year\u2019s election.<\/p>\n The district is about 46% Republican, 35% Democrat and 19% independent or third party.<\/p>\n Merkl-Gump was elected to the Pennridge School Board in 2023, when five Democrats won all five seats. The wins followed the board\u2019s decision to hire a consultant linked to a conservative Christian college to rewrite the district\u2019s curriculum. Democrats have since grown their board majority to 8-1.<\/p>\n A spokesperson at the Bucks County Republican Committee in Doylestown said they hadn\u2019t heard of Protecting Our Democracy.<\/p>\n What the mailer says<\/p>\n Protecting Our Democracy\u2019s mailer alleges the Democratic Party is dominated by corporations and that the party tried to have a single primary candidate on the May 19 ballot. PACs do not coordinate their spending with candidates they support.<\/p>\n \u201cFrom the very beginning, the corporate-dominated Democratic party bosses were trying to deny you a choice and shove their hand-picked candidate down your throat,\u201d it says.<\/p>\n The flier is referring to a straw poll taken in February<\/a> by Democratic committees in Bucks and Lehigh on whether it would be best served to have one Democrat on the primary ballot.<\/p>\n At the time, Richlandtown Mayor Wayne Codner and business owner Juan Vargas also were in the race. They later dropped out: Codner because he didn\u2019t see a clear path to victory, and Vargas due to time constraints involved in running.<\/p>\n Lehigh County Democratic Committee chairperson Lori McFarland previously said the poll was conducted more to get a feel for how the electorate was leaning. She also said a one-person primary was a means of conserving money for the November election. Patriots for Coleman \u2014 Coleman\u2019s campaign committee \u2014 started the year with $853,429 in the bank.<\/p>\n The four candidates balked at the idea and continued to collect signatures on their nomination petitions. McFarland said she was unfamiliar with the mailer.<\/p>\n The mailer also takes issue with Merkl-Gump\u2019s endorsement by Bucks state Sen. Steve Santarsiero, accusing him of trying to push the other candidates out of the race. \u201cSounds like something Donald Trump would do,\u201d the flier says. Santarsiero could not be reached for comment.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not unusual for elected officials to back candidates or give donations from their own campaign committees. Merkl-Gump also has been endorsed by state party leader Sen. Jay Costa, Lehigh lawmakers including Sen. Nick Miller and Reps. Mike Schlossberg and Peter Schweyer, and Bucks Reps. Tim Brennan, Tina Davis, Perry Warren, Jim Prokopiak and Brian Munroe.<\/p>\n The campaign flier comes as there are several proposals to tax skill games in Pennsylvania \u2014 none of which was sponsored or co-sponsored by Santarsiero.<\/p>\n Gov. Josh Shapiro, in his 2026-27 budget plan, proposes limiting the gaming terminals to 40,000 from the estimated 70,000 already in use statewide. It would also include taxing revenue at 52%. The state Gaming Control Board would be in charge of regulating the industry.<\/p>\n A proposal by Republican state Sen. Gene Yaw would tax the revenue from the terminals at 16%. His bill would also require an initial license application fee of $1 million for skill video game distributors, $25,000 for operators and $250 for establishments, and an annual renewal fee. Oversight would be given to the state Department of Revenue, which also oversees the Pennsylvania Lottery.<\/p>\n Yaw introduced the bill in November, where it was referred to the Senate Community, Economic & Recreational Development Committee, where he and Coleman are members.<\/p>\n A proposed bill by Republican state Sen. Chris Gebhard would establish a 35% tax on revenue with oversight given to the state Gaming Control Board.<\/p>\n Neither bill has gone to the Senate for a vote nor has Shapiro\u2019s budget been passed.<\/p>\n This story first appeared on Armchair Lehigh Valley and is being published on themorningcall.com as part of a partnership with the website, which aims to give voters factual information in a nonpartisan way to help them make informed decisions at the polls. Armchair Lehigh Valley is run by publisher Katherine Reinhard and editor Robert H. Orenstein, two former Morning Call employees. Learn more about Armchair Lehigh Valley and subscribe at armchairlehighvalley.substack.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Charles Malinchak, for Armchair Lehigh Valley A new political action committee, chaired by a vending company owner…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":183382,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,121,120,836,182,139,50,432],"class_list":["post-183381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news","tag-election","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-top-stories-tmc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183381\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/183382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}