• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

Rooney Aide Brennan Bests Three Rivals in 133rd District Race: Democrat Worked in Retiring Incumbent's Bethlehem Office.

Posted on: Wednesday, 17 May 2006, 09:05 CDT

By Daryl Nerl, The Morning Call, Allentown, Pa.

May 17--While angry voters ousted some incumbent legislators across Pennsylvania, a protege of retiring state Rep. T.J. Rooney won the Democratic nomination for his vacant House seat.

Joseph F. Brennan, Rooney's top aide in his south Bethlehem district office, overcame a strong showing by Jose Rosado and the mud flung at him by another candidate in the campaign's last two weeks to win the party's nomination Tuesday in the 133rd District.

While Rosado soundly defeated Brennan in their mutual backyard of south Bethlehem and Fountain Hill, Brennan cleaned up in the Lehigh County suburbs north of Allentown, taking about 41 percent of the vote and the plurality of a four-way race, according to an unofficial vote count.

"I got hit pretty hard in this campaign," Brennan said in a telephone interview. "The most rewarding thing I found were the new friends I made all over the district."

According to unofficial results with 97 percent of the precincts reporting, Brennan got 1,439 votes, Rosado got 1,135, Rybak received 608 votes and Pearson 309 votes.

Brennan said he knocked on more than 5,000 doors during the campaign. Apparently, many of the people he met did not hold him responsible for Rooney's controversial vote to raise his own and the salaries of other Pennsylvania legislators. Early on in his campaign, Brennan said he differed with Rooney on that issue, though he consistently expressed pride in other work his boss had done for the district.

Brennan, 42, a former Northampton County councilman, will in all likelihood face Dawn Berrigan, 44, a Republican member of the Catasauqua Area School Board, in November. Berrigan ran unopposed in the GOP primary.

Rosado, who trailed Brennan by 304 votes, called to concede the election before 10 p.m. After that, he addressed a small crowd of supporters at the Puerto Rican Club in south Bethlehem where he told them to be proud of themselves and urged them to support Brennan and other Democratic candidates in November.

"We came to respect one another," said Rosado, an assistant principal at East Hills Middle School in Bethlehem. "I thought the race was tough on Joe. It was a difficult situation for him and his wife. That's unfortunate. In addition to congratulating him, I was expressing my feelings that it had to be difficult for him to endure some of the things that were brought out in this race."

Rosado was referring to negative campaign mailers sent in the last two weeks by Anthony Rybak, a Bethlehem attorney and son of the late Rep. William C. Rybak, who accused Brennan of being a criminal who could not be trusted in Harrisburg.

Rybak was not much of a factor in the race, finishing third with about 17 percent of the vote, according to the unofficial count. Dennis Pearson, a retired Bethlehem Steel worker and a substitute teacher from Allentown, finished fourth, with about 11 percent of the vote. He did win the two east Allentown voting precincts in the district where Pearson has been president of the neighborhood organization for about 30 years.

One of Rybak's campaign mailers contained a doctored photo of Brennan behind bars and described a 2003 incident in which the former Northampton County commissioner was arrested and charged with shoplifting at a Lower Saucon Township supermarket. Left out of the postcard was the fact that the charges were dismissed in District Court.

Brennan fired back in one mailer, which said, "Rybak ignores voter outrage and thinks legislators deserve a pay raise." In reality, Rybak has said future legislative pay raises should be tied to inflation. Brennan said that would have resulted in aggregate 50 percent raises in each of the last three decades.

The 133rd District includes parts of Allentown and Bethlehem and the townships of Salisbury and Whitehall; all of Catasauqua, Coplay and Fountain Hill boroughs; and Hanover Township in Lehigh County.

daryl.nerl@mcall.com

610-861-3630

-----

Copyright (c) 2006, The Morning Call, Allentown, Pa.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail reprints@krtinfo.com.

Unknown:BETH,

Source: The Morning Call, Allentown, Pennsylvania

More News in this Category