declared victory in the 22nd District race Tuesday night<\/a> as results showed her leading by more than 300 votes. Tiburcio, however, said she would \u201cwait for the final votes to be tallied.\u201d<\/p>\nThat happened Wednesday when Lehigh County completed its mail ballot count. Unofficial results show Gerlach earned 1,692 votes to Tiburcio\u2019s 1,289.<\/p>\n
In a statement, Tiburcio said she called Gerlach on Wednesday to congratulate her and offer her support.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know that despite our differences, she and I both agree our district deserves the very best \u2014 our schools deserve to be fully funded and equitable, our working families deserve fair compensation and affordable necessities, and our community deserves to be a safe place for all,\u201d Tiburcio said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlthough the results did not go the way we had hoped, I am overwhelmed with gratitude for all of the amazing people I met throughout the course of this campaign, from every voter who welcomed me, to the countless volunteers who gave their time, to my fellow representatives who guided me to Harrisburg, to my family and friends who were my endless support system, and my campaign team who were with me every step of the way,\u201d she said in a statement.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis campaign may be over, but my commitment to our community is not. I look forward to fighting hard for this district through the remainder of my term, and then returning to the place I have called home for more than 30 years to continue that fight in my own way.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tiburcio was handpicked by state and local Democrats to run in the Feb. 24 special election to fill the remainder of former Rep. Josh Siegel\u2019s term representing the district, which covers parts of Allentown and Salisbury Township. She beat Republican Robert Smith Jr., whom Gerlach will now face in November for a full term.<\/p>\n
With the majority of the voters in the district registered Democrats, Gerlach is heavily favored in the general election.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rep. Ana Tiburcio, a former Allentown School Board member who was elected to represent parts of Allentown and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":150049,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,121,120,836,433,182,139,28,50,2183,432],"class_list":["post-198900","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news","tag-election","tag-lehigh-county","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-pennsylvania","tag-politics","tag-salisbury-township","tag-top-stories-tmc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198900","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=198900"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198900\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/150049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}