Ultra-conservative candidates seeking power from the ground up in Pennsylvania

• Scott LaMar
  BioRecent Stories

  

  Scott LaMar has worked in both radio and television for more than four decades.
  
  Currently, LaMar is the Host and Executive Producer of The Spark program on WITF-FM, 89.5 & 93.3 in Harrisburg, Pa.
  
  Previously, LaMar was WITF TV’s Sr. Public Affairs producer and produced the station’s award-winning weekly public affairs TV program, Smart Talk.
  
  In addition to his on-air duties, LaMar has moderated political candidate debates, including those for candidates running for Pennsylvania governor and the U.S. Senate and was a regular contributor to BBC World News TV before and after the 2020 U.S. Presidential election.
  
  LaMar often emcees or moderates local events and has gone as far as California to emcee a national event.
  
  The American Society of Civil Engineers honored LaMar with their national Excellence in Journalism award in 2020. He has been nominated for five Mid-Atlantic Emmy Awards.
  
  LaMar and The Spark have been recognized throughout the Central Pennsylvania community including ADVOZ Lancaster’s “Dignity in Dialogue Award”, the South-Central Assembly’s “Regional Citizen Award” and was named a “Humanitarian Hero” by The Humane Society of the United States/Pennsylvania.
  
  A native of Coatesville, Pa., LaMar has also worked as a broadcast news anchor, sports play-by-play announcer and manager.

 Gene J. Puskar / AP Photo

Supporters of President Donald Trump campaign at a busy intersection in Cranberry Township, Pa., during rush hour on Friday, Oct. 16, 2020.

Airdate: January 18, 2023

Former President Donald Trump has been the dominant figure in Republican politics over the last six years. Loyalty to Trump and his policies and campaigning on what Trump’s beliefs were part of the Make America Great Again movement.

Trump may have lost the 2020 election and the candidates he endorsed in 2022 may not have fared well for national offices, but the new battlegrounds may be on the local level – school boards, municipal offices like mayor or township supervisor or even local Republican party positions.

The USA Today Network of Pennsylvania, which includes newspapers like the York Daily Record, Lebanon Daily News, and Chambersburg Public Opinion, have investigated the America First, MAGA, Patriot Movement strategy to gain power from the ground up.

Two reporters who worked on the stories were on The Spark Wednesday — Bethany Rodgers, Government Accountability Reporter for the USA Today Network in Pennsylvania and Chris Ullery, USA Today Network of Pennsylvania’s Extremism and Social Justice Reporter.

Rodgers talked about what they found,”We started looking into something called the precinct strategy, which is a strategy that has been promoted. It’s been pushed for years by this attorney, this Republican attorney from Maricopa County who is, you know, MAGA Republican. And it’s a way in his mind of transforming the Republican Party. A lot of people who are, you know, America first or far right or supporters of former President Trump feel that the Republican establishment doesn’t really represent them and that, you know, many elected Republicans don’t aren’t doing what they want them to do. So this is a way of trying to overtake the Republican Party. But instead of doing it, you know, starting from the top level positions that the top of the pyramid, what they want to do is basically go in and get America first or MAGA Republicans to join the local Republican Party, you know, the county chapters. And by doing that, by filling the committee positions, which, you know, there are a few committee positions assigned to each voting precinct. And, you know, this is a pretty obscure position. Many of them are vacant. A huge number of them are actually vacant on a national level. And so the idea is it’s pretty easy to just kind of go in and get appointed or run uncontested and sort of snap up one of these positions. And then from there, you know, you can basically overtake a party on a county level and sort of start steering it in the direction you want to go.”

Rodgers described the difference between the far right candidates and what would be considered mainstream Republicans,”One of the experts that I talked to for this story pointed out that in a lot of ways these far right Republicans aren’t that much different ideologically from (Republicans) on policy issues. There isn’t that much of a distinction between a lot of the conservatives on the right. What really sets this them apart is to what lengths are they willing to go to pursue their goals.”

Ullery indicated that opposition to mail-in voting is the main focus of the candidates who believe there’s a national conspiracy,”The mail ballots are part of a larger machine that is controlled by big tech and legacy media and the Democrats to ensure that one party rule. So really, I think they have a singular focus of repealing Act 77 (mail-in voting) sometime in the next four years. But what’s also interesting is that part of the strategy that we heard the Berks County Patriots discuss back in November was to endorse mail voting to encourage Republicans to vote by mail so that they could basically get a leg up. I think Sam Brancadora, the head of the Berks County Patriots, said, we have to take a page out of the Democrats playbook, do exactly what they did except for the cheating, and then we can win. And then eventually we’re going to get rid of mail voting. And that is their their singular point. You will see some overlap, though, with sort of the anti-pandemic mitigation protesters that we saw throughout the past two years. Some of the groups that signed that petition include things like medical freedom in their names, sort of that little tip of the hat to anti COVID mitigation efforts.”