{"id":87066,"date":"2026-01-15T01:43:13","date_gmt":"2026-01-15T01:43:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/87066\/"},"modified":"2026-01-15T01:43:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-15T01:43:13","slug":"former-current-allentown-school-board-members-vie-for-pa-house-district-22-seat-state-government","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/87066\/","title":{"rendered":"Former, current Allentown school board members vie for Pa. House District 22 seat | State Government"},"content":{"rendered":"

The balance of power in the Pennsylvania House has been razor-thin the last few years.<\/p>\n

Democrats have held the slimmest of margins. That margin will be tested in a special election in our area about six weeks from now.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Special election set for Feb. 24 to fill vacant seat left by state Rep. Josh Siegel<\/a><\/p>\n

House District 22 covers parts of Allentown and Salisbury Township in Lehigh County.<\/p>\n

Republican Robert Smith will face Democrat Ana Tiburcio.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Ana Tiburcio named Democratic candidate for February 24 special election<\/a><\/p>\n

She replaced Democratic candidate Julian Guridy, who had to withdraw over failing to meet residential requirements.<\/p>\n

Ana Tiburcio says she got the call last week: Julian Guridy was stepping down. And now, this three-year member of the Allentown School Board would have the chance to lead House District 22.<\/p>\n

“All the messages, all the calls have been of support. We’re there for you, we’re going to walk with you,” said Tiburcio. “Everybody has explained everything to me step-by-step to me. So in a way that calms my nerves a little bit.”<\/p>\n

Democrats had originally chosen the 31-year-old Guridy for the ballot, but he had recently moved back from Florida, and state law requires a candidate live in the state for four consecutive years before running.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Lehigh County Democratic Committee members nominate Julian Guridy for special election<\/a><\/p>\n

Now, he’s throwing his support behind Tiburcio.<\/p>\n

“Because of all the work that I put into this over the course of the years I was really looking forward to it I was really looking forward to represent where I was born and raised,” said Guridy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I do support her. She’s a great person. Ana is very well involved here in Allentown,” he continued.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Tiburcio will run against Republican Candidate Robert Smith, himself a former member of the Allentown school board, and a former member of city council in the late 90’s.<\/p>\n

“What I want to do is help people. I want to help working families. Affordability. Groceries are too high. Prescription drugs are too high. My mother takes prescription drugs. The seniors in my neighborhood. They say it’s too high, Bob and I want to help them any way I can. I know Republicans and Democrats can work together to get this done,” Smith said.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The balance of power in the Pennsylvania House has been razor-thin the last few years. Democrats have held…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":87067,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[214,119,121,120,232,43471,16572],"class_list":{"0":"post-87066","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-allentown","8":"tag-_homepage_top_stories","9":"tag-allentown","10":"tag-allentown-headlines","11":"tag-allentown-news","12":"tag-allentown-area","13":"tag-local_government","14":"tag-state_government"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87066","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=87066"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87066\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}