While the election brought euphoria to Democrats nationwide, it also brought a realization Lehigh Valley Democrats now wish had been made more than a year ago: Charlie Dent may not be invincible.
With the ink barely dry on Dent's nine-point victory margin over severely underfunded and relatively unknown challenger Charles Dertinger, Democrats are already talking about who will challenge the Republican congressman in two years.
William F. Roth, a business professor at DeSales University, proclaimed late last week that he will seek the 2008 Democratic nomination in the 15th Congressional District. Among the issues he said he wants to campaign on are ending the war in Iraq and bringing about a universal health care system. Roth, 65, flirted with the idea of running for Congress in 2004 and 2006, but did not formally enter either race.
Meanwhile, local Democratic bloggers are buzzing about a potential run by state Sen. Lisa Boscola, fresh from a 72 percent to 28 percent drubbing of Republican challenger Bonnie Dodge to win a third term representing the 18th District.
Bernie O'Hare from LV Ramblings reported last week that Boscola was checking this one out after Boscola's COS posted a series of remarks saying as much.
The Titanic Bonnie Dodge for Senate Campaign
For Lehigh Valley political observers, last season’s “Bonnie Dodge for Senate” campaign no doubt offered a peculiar pageantry. Teetering back and forth on a variety of off-kilter planks – from monorails for the Poconos to herbal remedies for the masses – the quixotic effort probably at times seemed refreshingly entertaining. After all, no gray-flannel campaign managed by expensive consultants would roll out the enigmatic slogan, “I’ve got my hands in my own pockets,” illustrated with a photo of the candidate with palms dutifully plunged into an austere pantsuit, a vaguely disturbing pantomime.
Yet as Voltaire observed, “All history is little else than a long succession of useless cruelties.” And this is the real history of the Bonnie for Senate campaign. The doomed effort may not merit much of a retrospective, even though it is likely this self-righteous political figure does intend to lay her “family values” wares before the electorate once again (in a race for magistrate, we hear). But there is a whole other dimension to the campaign and to the behavior of the candidate that has never been revealed, one that is all too familiar to members of our family.
Several weeks ago, I took the first step in alerting the wider community to the hypocrisy and mean-spiritedness of this unctuously moralistic candidate by posting the following response on the Lehigh Valley Ramblings blog to one of her ad-hominem tirades: http://lehighvalleyramblings.blogspot.com/2007/06/...
Many members of the Dodge family, most of whom she has completely alienated, agree with me that the more attention we can bring to this individual’s behavior, the more likely we are to ensure the health and safety of our father, and protect the family from the spasms of venom that she has continually injected into family relationships.
But beyond this, there is an unwritten story of profligacy and greed that puts the “hands in pockets” candidate at the center of an immense financial disaster. Part of this web is the “Upbeat with Bonnie Dodge” radio show that she hosted for more than a year on WGPA. This was a pay-for-play program that required massive cash infusions. No doubt it was meant to prepare the way for a subsequent triumph at the polls. Instead, in my view, it is likely to have helped pave the way for the financial collapse of the family business, and the loss of jobs for more than two dozen Lehigh Valley workers.
In the end, “Bonnie values” have left a good and decent family in tatters. It is something to remember the next time she pops up to challenge the Catholic “credentials” of a political opponent, or reappears at a public forum cloaked in piety, stirring the familiar cauldron of recrimination.
Charles S. Dodge
Carlsbad, California
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