In its marquee sales event of the spring, the city Democratic Machine is rolling out a used car salesman for voters to test-drive in the May 20 Primary Election.
He’s an older model with high miles, deep dents and a history of costly damage to taxpayers, but former Scranton School Board President Bob Sheridan has “always wanted to run” for mayor, so why not give the plucky clunker a courtesy spin?
Voters who want to kick Sheridan’s tires are invited to attend the first of two mayoral “debates” hosted by the University of Scranton. From 6 to 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Sheridan will face Scranton Mayor Paige Gebhardt Cognetti in the PNC Auditorium inside the Loyola Science Center. From 7:15 to 8:15 p.m., Republican candidates Lynn Labrosky and Patricia Beynon will take the same stage to haggle over the nomination to finish second in November.
The debates are open to the public. Admission is free, but if you prefer democracy on demand, both debates will be recorded by ECTV and the university’s Center for Ethics and Excellence in Public Service website will post videos.
Those videos will no doubt be treasured keepsakes for Sheridan, whose abject lack of qualifications for the city’s top job is eclipsed only by his mammoth vanity. His candidacy is a massive middle finger to the taxpayers, teachers, students and families he let down in his eight-year reign of error on the school board. When voters finally gave Bob the boot in the 2017 primary, the district was on the brink of collapse, carrying $183 million in long-term debt and facing a $47 million deficit.
Add to that baggage Sheridan’s past problems keeping up with payments on a city loan for his used-car business, taking campaign donations from district vendors and a pair of epic Scranton scandals – a criminal car repair racket bilking taxpayers on Sheridan’s watch and his alleged involvement in “Exam Scam,” the 1985 conspiracy to rig city civil service tests.
If Bob’s looking for endorsements, he should reach out to Samsonite.
Before anyone gets too worked up, Sheridan’s campaign is designed to be a day trip. In used car sales and crony politics, Bob is what’s known as a “loss leader.” The Machine knows it can’t sell him to savvy voters, but morbid curiosity might bring enough rubes onto the lot to gauge its chances of taking out Paige in November.
While technically separate entities, the Scranton City Democratic Committee and the Lackawanna County Democratic Committee are two heads of the same decrepit beast. They occasionally differ on who to run and how political spoils should be split, but they are united in their pursuit of power and the preservation of the crony politics that profits them and their friends at the public’s eternal expense.
It’s the same corrupt game being played in the county Machine’s ongoing hostile takeover of county government. Democratic Commissioner Bill Gaughan voted for a wildly unpopular but absolutely necessary property tax increase, which could damage the party’s chances at retaining control in 2027. The county Machine, led by chairman Chris Patrick, wants to sideline Gaughan and install its handpicked majority for the next term.
Even Sheridan “condemned” the secret selection process Patrick presided over. In a grammatically sound statement almost certainly prepared by someone else, Bob recently announced he is “temporarily suspending my participation and chairmanship with the Scranton City Democratic Committee” to seek the party’s mayoral nomination (against a popular, successful, incumbent Democrat) and because of “the lack of transparency currently being exhibited by certain leaders of the Democratic Party in Lackawanna County.”
Bob’s sudden love of transparency is inspiring. Here’s some more: Sheridan set himself up as the Machine’s “canary in the coal mine.” The size of his certain loss to Paige in the primary will help the Machine decide which “independent” candidate to back this fall.
So far, Mike Mancini and former Scranton Sewer Authority Executive Director Gene Barrett are the two independents who say they’re running for election on Nov. 4. Mancini is running a spirited but mostly online campaign so far. Word on the street says Barrett was heavily courted by the Machine, but he decided not to run in the primary.
“Looking at the numbers, with three Democrats in a primary race splitting up the votes it’s to the advantage of the incumbent,” Barrett said. He’s right. The numbers look good for the current mayor.
Numbers like: $23 million in stormwater infrastructure investments, $26-plus million invested in parks, 4,500 street signs upgraded, 72 hazardous structures demolished; and exiting Act 47 after 30 years. The city has an investment-grade bond rating and hasn’t had to take a tax anticipation note since 2022. Paige steered the city through the pandemic, is nationally respected and routinely collaborates with mayors of similar-size cities on solutions to shared problems.
In a healthy political environment, the party would rally around a popular, successful incumbent, but Paige committed the cardinal sin of rejecting the Machine. Also, she’s from Oregon and a Harvard graduate. How “alien” and ”uppity!”
Paige beat the Machine twice – in a special election in 2019 and a comfortable reelection in 2021. She succeeded the last Machine-made mayor – a karate instructor who cosplayed as a cop on Parade Day – after he went to prison for shaking down city vendors. Bill Courtright set the bar so low, all Paige had to do was not trip over it.
Now the Machine is tripping over itself to find a way to take back City Hall. Control of city council, the school board and county government are also key objectives, but the war on Paige and the progress she represents is the Machine’s marquee cause of this young and sure to be ugly election year.
When Sheridan was president of the school board, I was widely criticized for noting that he didn’t graduate from high school. While I respect Bob and anyone else who goes back and earns a GED, such a candidate has no business running the multimillion-dollar business of a school district.
Same goes for a city of 75,000 that anchors a county of 216,000 and a region of nearly 2 million citizens. Even for the Machine, the scalding cynicism of backing a high-school dropout with a long, documented record of costly cronyism against a Harvard-educated, nationally respected, successful incumbent is breathtaking.
Years ago, used-car dealers wisely decided their business needed a branding overhaul. Today, such vehicles are described as “previously owned.” It sounds better, but it won’t make a lemon a Lexus.
CHRIS KELLY, the Times-Tribune columnist, barely graduated high school and never finished college. Contact the writer: ckelly@scrantontimes.com; @cjkink on X; Chris Kelly, The Times-Tribune on Facebook.