By\u00a0Steve Novak, Armchair Lehigh Valley<\/p>\n
A Philadelphia-area election law attorney who specializes in legal challenges on behalf of Republicans, including President Donald Trump, is representing\u00a0Andrew Tupone, the third-party candidate in the 7th Congressional District who is facing\u00a0petition challenges\u00a0calling for his removal from the November ballot<\/a>.<\/p>\n Tupone is running as a Green Party candidate. The party has disavowed him and filed one of the challenges to his nomination petition. The other came from three Democratic voters in Lehigh County. Both are scheduled for hearings Thursday morning in Commonwealth Court in Harrisburg.<\/p>\n Walter S. Zimolong, whose law firm is in Villanova, filed his appearance on behalf of Tupone on Monday, according to the court docket.<\/p>\n Tupone told Armchair Lehigh Valley that a Google search for \u201cconstitutional election attorney philadelphia\u201d led him to Zimolong.<\/p>\n \u201cAfter speaking with him I felt confident he was a good person to hire,\u201d Tupone said in an email. Zimolong did not answer a request for comment.<\/p>\n The challenges allege dishonest tactics by Tupone and his petition circulators. Tupone is accused of being a \u201cspoiler candidate\u201d to benefit first-term Republican Rep. Ryan Mackenzie by drawing votes from Democratic challenger Bob Brooks.<\/p>\n \u201cAnyone with eyes can see Tupone is a Republican plant trying to trick voters in a desperate ploy to save Mackenzie\u2019s doomed reelection campaign,\u201d Benny Stanislawski, communications director for the Brooks campaign, said Monday. Mackenzie\u2019s team declined comment.<\/p>\n Tupone, a 37-year-old from Bethlehem Township, was a Republican from 2008<\/a> until early this year. He switched to the Democratic Party in February and Green in April.<\/p>\n Tupone has said he was not an active Republican, but he now has one representing him.<\/p>\n According to\u00a0Zimolong\u2019s biography on his firm\u2019s website, he represented Trump and the Republican National Committee in \u201cmultiple election-related matters\u201d during the 2024 election, including a voter-access dispute in Bucks County.<\/p>\n He also says he coordinated a statewide recount on behalf of Sen.-elect David McCormick and the National Republican Senatorial Committee in 2024. In May, Zimolong posted on his firm\u2019s website that the firm supported the $1.8 billion Trump Anti-Weaponization Fund, the settlement fund that could have benefited Trump supporters who attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.<\/p>\n Zimolong is an executive board member of the Republican National Lawyers Association and leads its southeastern Pennsylvania chapter, according to his website bio.\u00a0The RNLA\u2019s website\u00a0says he \u201cregularly represents Republican candidates, elected officials, and national party committees in election integrity matters,\u201d including \u201cadvocating for lawful ballot access.\u201d<\/p>\n Zimolong was involved in cases against drop-boxes in Chester and Lehigh counties in 2022. In both, he served as co-counsel for America First Legal, a group led by Stephen Miller and Mark Meadows, who served in Trump\u2019s first term. Miller is now Trump\u2019s deputy chief of staff.<\/p>\n In the Lehigh County case, Judge Thomas A. Capehart rejected a request from four Republican voters that Lehigh County election staff monitor drop-off boxes to ensure that voters place only one ballot in them, as required by state law. The judge said the county deploys video cameras to monitor activity at the five locations and election workers \u201cmay unduly interfere with voters lawfully returning ballots.\u201d<\/p>\n Zimolong has contributed more than $30,000 since 2008 to Republican candidates and groups, according to a review of campaign finance data filed with the Federal Election Commission and the Pennsylvania Department of State. In 2025, he gave $250 to Mackenzie\u2019s reelection campaign.<\/p>\n The 7th Congressional District comprises all of Carbon, Lehigh and Northampton counties and part of Monroe County. As a political swing district, analysts expect a close race that could help determine which party controls the U.S. House for the remainder of Trump\u2019s term. The last congressional race here in 2024 came down to about 4,000 votes, or 1 percentage point.<\/p>\n Tupone faces two challenges to his nomination petitions that seek to remove him from the Nov. 3 ballot. One from the Green Party of Pennsylvania alleges that Tupone falsely gave the impression that he had the party\u2019s support. Barring a decision invalidating the petitions, the Greens ask that the court at least prevent Tupone from using the party name for the rest of the campaign.<\/p>\n The other challenge comes from three Lehigh County voters, all Democrats: Joyce Moore, a former Upper Milford Township supervisor; Louise Dillensnyder of Emmaus; and Susan Baranek of Upper Milford Township. They are represented by Philadelphia attorney\u00a0Kevin Greenberg, an election lawyer and active Democrat who until recently was a member of the Pennsylvania State Democratic Committee.<\/p>\n That challenge takes aim at the 22 people who circulated Tupone\u2019s petitions \u2014 all but one was from out of state, none from the Lehigh Valley, and one has ties to the Maryland White Republican Council. The filing notes numerous alleged technical deficiencies on the circulators\u2019 petitions. It also accuses them of hiding the true nature of the petition by concealing parts of the paper and telling voters they were signing something against data centers or to reduce electricity prices.<\/p>\n The Lehigh County voters\u2019 challenge seeks to invalidate nearly all of Tupone\u2019s signatures, which would leave him well short of the 4,704 required to appear on the November ballot.<\/p>\n Tupone claims to have gotten 10,000 signatures, double what the Green Party\u2019s own candidate for governor received.<\/p>\n Tupone ran twice for a district judgeship in Northampton County, losing a primary in 2015 and a general election in 2022. Those races are considered nonpartisan, but he was a Republican at the time, and performed better with Republicans in both campaigns.<\/p>\n Robert H. Orenstein and Katherine Reinhard contributed to this story.<\/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\u00a0Steve Novak, Armchair Lehigh Valley A Philadelphia-area election law attorney who specializes in legal challenges on behalf of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":269391,"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-269390","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\/269390","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=269390"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269390\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/269391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}