{"id":75909,"date":"2026-01-02T01:10:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-02T01:10:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/75909\/"},"modified":"2026-01-02T01:10:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-02T01:10:08","slug":"candidate-drops-out-over-selection-process","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/75909\/","title":{"rendered":"Candidate drops out over selection process"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>After left-leaning political advocates <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mcall.com\/2025\/12\/29\/left-leaning-allentown-advocates-accuse-lehigh-county-democrats-of-disenfranchising-voters-in-special-election\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">alleged the Lehigh County Democratic Party is unfairly supporting one candidate for the upcoming special election<\/a> to fill a state House seat, another candidate has exited the race.<\/p>\n<p>Douglas Kunkle notified the special election committee via email on New Year\u2019s Eve that he is withdrawing his name from consideration.<\/p>\n<p>Kunkle was one of five candidates vying to represent the 22nd District seat vacated after Josh Siegel was elected Lehigh County executive. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mcall.com\/2025\/12\/17\/siegel-special-election-pa-house\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Siegel will be sworn in Monday<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Julian Guridy, a constituent services representative with state Sen. Nick Miller\u2019s office and former Democratic delegate in the 2024 election, and Allentown City Council member Ce-Ce Gerlach have launched public campaigns. Kunkle, Erlinda Aguilar and Lewis Shupe also applied but have not campaigned publicly.<\/p>\n<p>Kunkle said news coverage of the party\u2019s decision-making process influenced his decision to drop out.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s come to my attention that a decision has already been made in confirmation of The Morning Call article by at least one member of the committee,\u201d Kunkle wrote. \u201cThis is not to say I have abandoned my interest but would rather spend my time in a more productive fashion taking my case directly to the electorate as I did when elected Constable in the future primary should I choose to run for the office.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mcall.com\/2025\/12\/29\/left-leaning-allentown-advocates-accuse-lehigh-county-democrats-of-disenfranchising-voters-in-special-election\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Morning Call article<\/a> he referred to was about a Dec. 29 news conference at which party critics said leaders are unfairly supporting Guridy\u2019s candidacy by removing precinct committee persons and holding closed meetings.<\/p>\n<p>Precinct committee persons are members of the Democratic Party who are elected to represent their local voting district. They will meet Saturday to conduct candidate interviews and select a Democratic nominee, whose name will be on the Feb. 24 election ballot.<\/p>\n<p>Chair Lori McFarland has defended the selection process, saying that it aligns to state law and Democratic party bylaws.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After left-leaning political advocates alleged the Lehigh County Democratic Party is unfairly supporting one candidate for the upcoming&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":75910,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,121,120,433,182,139,28,50,432],"class_list":{"0":"post-75909","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-allentown","8":"tag-allentown","9":"tag-allentown-headlines","10":"tag-allentown-news","11":"tag-lehigh-county","12":"tag-local-news","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-pennsylvania","15":"tag-politics","16":"tag-top-stories-tmc"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75909","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=75909"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75909\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75910"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}