BETHLEHEM, Pa. \u2013 The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled Thursday that third-party candidate Andrew Tupone’s name will remain off the November ballot for Pennsylvania’s 7th Congressional District.<\/p>\n
The ruling confirmed a decision earlier this month in Commonwealth Court that Tupone cannot run as a Green Party candidate without the party’s endorsement or support. The Supreme Court has yet to release an opinion detailing its ruling.<\/p>\n
Tupone’s vowed to continue his legal battle in a statement issues Thursday night.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis fight is about more than my candidacy. It is about the ability of future third-party candidates to participate in our elections and give voters additional choices. I entered this race because I believe voters deserve options beyond the two major parties, and I am not walking away from that principle,\u201d he said in a news release.<\/p>\n
Tupone’s campaign has been viewed with skepticism by his political opponents and, at times, even the courts. Tupone gathered more than 10,500 signatures in about a month to run as the Green Party candidate \u2013 more than double the amount needed. <\/p>\n
However, he did so without any assistance from the party, instead relying on people he did not personally know and struggled to name. He testified in August that he hoped they would return his forms to him because his address was on the paperwork.<\/p>\n
Officers with the Green Party of Pennsylvania said they had never heard of Tupone until this summer and did not consider him a member of the party. Party leadership took the extreme step of issuing a public statement in July warning supporters that a coordinated outside group was gathering signatures by posing as the Green Party.<\/p>\n
Tupone, who previously ran for magisterial district judge, switched his affiliation to Democrat in February. He switched again to the Green Party in April and testified that he legitimately intended to run for the Green Party’s nomination.<\/p>\n
Commonwealth Court Judge Stella Tsai cited that testimony when she ruled he be left off the ballot. Because he sought to affiliate with official Green Party of Pennsylvania, she found, the party had a First Amendment right to disassociate itself from him.<\/p>\n
The Green Party has little traction in the Lehigh Valley, accounting for about 0.1% of registered voters. The last third-party candidate to appear in a local congressional race wasn’t competitive, earning just 3% of the vote.<\/p>\n
If Tupone matched that level of support at the ballot, however, it could allow him to play spoiler. The last three Lehigh Valley congressional races were decided by less than three percentage points; U.S. Rep. Ryan Mackenzie bested then-incumbent Susan Wild by a one-point margin in 2024.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BETHLEHEM, Pa. \u2013 The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled Thursday that third-party candidate Andrew Tupone’s name will remain off…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":289226,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154],"class_list":["post-289225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289225","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=289225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289225\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/289226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}