Jason Richey was elected as the new chair of the Republican Committee of Allegheny County this weekend, but not before he had his first leadership headache and a taste of the election skepticism with which voters outside the party have already become familiar.
“Our party is ready to unite, fight, and win,” Richey said in a statement announcing that Republicans picked him to replace outgoing chair Sam DeMarco, who left the post to take a job working for U.S. Sen. Dave McCormick. “It's time to bring together conservatives from every corner of this county, build a movement that stands for working families, and take the fight to the far-left Democrats.”
“Republicans here don’t want to be divided anymore,” Richey, a Sewickley lawyer and 2022 gubernatorial candidate, told WESA before the vote. “They want to unify. And I have a plan to do that.”
Richey received 338 votes from members of the Republican committee, which like its Democratic counterpart seeks to drum up support for the party’s slate and help recruit down-ballot candidates. More than two dozen committee members voted for what the party’s statement called “other candidates.” Two withdrew from the race days before the vote but were contesting it in other ways.
Attorney Doug Austin and MAGA-inspired, voting-integrity activist Anthony Golembiewski announced their withdrawal in a Valentine’s Day letter to committee members. In it, they argued that “by continuing to participate, we would be endorsing a process that lacks the transparency and fairness essential to elections at every level.”
“We don't want to sanction an improper election,” Austin told WESA. “If we ran and got votes, we would be agreeing to what they've done.”
Said Golembiewski: “I refuse to be a part of the problem."
The two object to a number of procedural issues, including: the absence of an “independent audit to verify the results” of the election, and difficulties obtaining and making use of email contact information for committee members. (The committee’s membership has more than doubled to around 900 in recent years, often through appointments by party leaders to fill vacancies.)
The two bristle at having to sign a non-disclosure agreement before they could access email lists: The party says that’s to prevent committee members from being bombarded with unwelcome email blasts. And they note that while they both head local chapters of the committee, Richey himself is a newcomer.
“I'm not allowed to tell you what’s on this,” Golembiewski said, indicating a thumb drive with committee member data. “But I am allowed to tell you what's not” — Richey’s name.
DeMarco, who backed Richey as his replacement from the outset, scoffed at those complaints.
The two “overestimated the demand for their leadership,” he said. “Now, instead of bowing out gracefully, they are going to step aside and take shots."
“I think Jason is the guy best positioned to lead the party,” DeMarco added. “He understands how to raise money, how to deal with the media, and he can work with elected officials.”
Driving some of the animosity is a longstanding dispute over whether local GOP officials have done enough to pursue claims of voter fraud. The issue was at the heart of Austin’s 2022 effort to topple DeMarco, and Golembiewski and a cadre of like-minded Republicans pursued their own investigation of county voter rolls by challenging voters who notified the U.S. Postal Service of plans to move.
DeMarco, who previously served on the three-member board that oversees the voting process, has been dismissive. He’s previously said that such complaints are often made by people who “wake up one day over the Cheerios [and] believe that they just discovered this incredible fraud.”
Such criticism seems unlikely to faze Golembiewski. In fact, the election has given him a new list of voters to look into: some members of the committee itself.
Shortly before the chairmanship vote, Golembiewski got back a handful of the letters he and Austin had sent to the committee about their concerns. The letters were marked as undeliverable, though the addresses were on the RCAC’s mailing list.
“My goal is to make sure they’re registered to vote,” Golembiewski said. “Because if they’re not registered to vote in Allegheny County, why would they be able to vote in the election for chairman?”
DeMarco called such concerns “ridiculous,” noting that “when I send invites to the [GOP’s annual] Lincoln Day dinner, I get things that come back as undeliverable.”
Addresses on the list can be a couple of years out of date, he said, with people moving short distances in the meantime.
But Austin said that if the party is to improve its performance, it can’t just dismiss such concerns.
“There’s too much division,” he said. “You’ve got the RINOs [Republicans in Name Only] versus the MAGAs” who follow Trump.
“I don’t see that at all,” countered Richey. “The vast majority of Republicans are behind me.”
Richey says he did have advantages coming into the race, thanks largely to his 2022 gubernatorial run. Richey withdrew before the primary, but he focused considerable energy on reaching out to committee voters.
”So this run — in many ways — when I walked in the door, people already knew me," he said.
Richey took a middle course on questions about voting integrity concerns.
“There are problems in the system, but more often than not we get it right," he said. "And if there is a problem we have a court system to resolve it, and we move on.”
But he said that “if there is a disputed election, we’re going to aggressively get involved to defend our candidates” — starting with this spring’s special election in the 35th state House district.
“We’ll be on the lookout” for potential improprieties there, he said, adding that “we often hear of problems in McKeesport.”
But more broadly, he said, he planned to build up the party in places where it had no committee people at all — “we’re going to be fighting for every block and every neighborhood” — and use fundraising skills he picked up from former Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey.
Most of all, he said, “I’m going to earn everybody’s trust. Everybody is welcome, and we need to bring in everyone who identifies as Republican.”
