{"id":263383,"date":"2026-08-11T17:53:38","date_gmt":"2026-08-11T17:53:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/263383\/"},"modified":"2026-08-11T17:53:38","modified_gmt":"2026-08-11T17:53:38","slug":"democrats-try-to-boot-green-party-hopeful-from-pa-07-ballot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/263383\/","title":{"rendered":"Democrats try to boot Green party hopeful from PA-07 ballot"},"content":{"rendered":"

A group of Democratic voters in the Lehigh Valley have filed a legal challenge to boot Andrew Tupone, a Green Party candidate for Congress<\/a>, from the midterm ballot, claiming he is a \u201cspoiler candidate\u201d whose petition signatures are riddled with irregularities.<\/p>\n

Joyce Moore, a former Democratic supervisor for Upper Milford Township; Louise Dillensnyder, secretary of the East Penn Democratic Club; and Susan Baranek, a Lehigh County Democratic Committee member, filed the challenge in court to Tupone\u2019s candidacy on Monday. They are represented by campaign lawyer Kevin Greenberg.<\/p>\n

They claim that Tupone\u2019s campaign illegally imported and paid a group of out-of-state people to circulate petitions in support of his candidacy, and that all but a few of the signatures they collected are not legally permissible as a result.<\/p>\n

In a statement announcing his candidacy in late July, Tupone said he is running to \u201coffer an independent progressive voice focused on the issues that matter most to the people of Pennsylvania\u2019s 7th district.\u201d His platform includes affordability, ending corruption, fighting climate change, \u201cstopping the fascist in the White House\u201d and \u201cending the genocide\u201d in Gaza, according to his statement.<\/p>\n

If his campaign survives the challenge, Tupone would run against Republican incumbent Ryan Mackenzie and Democratic candidate and firefighter union chief Bob Brooks. The district is considered a \u201ctoss-up\u201d by Cook Political Report, meaning the race is expected to be extraordinarily close and one of the few that will determine party control of the House of Representatives next year.<\/p>\n

Candidates for office in Pennsylvania must collect a certain amount of signatures from registered voters in support of their candidacy that is equivalent to 2% of the turnout of the prior election, according to state law.<\/p>\n

Tupone filed 9,460 signatures on his petition, more than the 4,074 signatures required, but according to the petition challenge, fewer than 100 lines are valid and legally permissible.<\/p>\n

The challengers allege that the nominating petitions contain duplicate signatures, omitted lines that were counted toward the signature total, and that the petition preamble (an introductory block of text at the top of the petition page that specifies candidate details) was improperly altered.<\/p>\n

It also alleges that numerous pages of signatures were altered by someone other than the petition circulator; that the addresses of several of the petition circulators were falsified; and that the circulators were imported from out of state and paid by a \u201cthird-party vendor that has not yet been disclosed and were paid for with improper undisclosed funds.\u201d<\/p>\n

Further, the challenge alleges that Tupone is \u201cnot truly affiliated with the Green Party but is, in fact, a spoiler candidate to distract progressive voters with that party label in an effort to reelect Congressman Ryan Mackenzie.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tupone ran as a Republican for district judge for Bethlehem Township in both 2015 and 2021. Further, Tim Runkle, co-chair of the Pennsylvania Green Party, told political news outlet Punchbowl News that the state party is not backing Tupone.<\/p>\n

Brooks\u2019 campaign issued a statement accusing Republican operatives of coordinating Tupone\u2019s campaign. The Republican Party has recruited and aided Green Party candidates in past election cycles to try and siphon votes away from Democrats,\u00a0according to reporting by the New York Times.<\/p>\n

Tupone, in a news release, called the petition challenge \u201can attempt by the Democratic establishment to silence voters who want another choice in the November election.\u201d<\/p>\n

A hearing on the objection is scheduled for Aug. 20 in Harrisburg.<\/p>\n

Reporter Lindsay Weber can be reached at Liweber@mcall.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A group of Democratic voters in the Lehigh Valley have filed a legal challenge to boot Andrew Tupone,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":256297,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154,836,182,139,50,432],"class_list":["post-263383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-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\/263383","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=263383"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263383\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/256297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}