Pennsylvania primary election: Despite high-profile races, a quiet day at the polls in Lehigh Valley

Tuesday’s weather was all a political hopeful could ask for: a crisp and sunny morning ripening into a comfortable afternoon of blue sky and light breezes.

Election weather.

This being a primary, though, with the presidential nominations a foregone conclusion, most Lehigh Valley polls were achingly slow. So a stormy day might not have made much difference.

Too bad. Primary voters got to choose, among other things, which Republican will face incumbent U.S. Rep. Susan Wild in November and whether longtime Democratic incumbent state Rep. Robert Freeman will keep his seat in the face of an in-party challenge from Easton Councilwoman Taiba Sultana.

Without a presidency in the balance, however, voters seemed to skip out.

“In November the lines will be snaking around the building,” predicted Marie Vinop, a Lehigh County Republican Committee member distributing GOP literature outside the Calvary Temple polling site in South Whitehall.

That’s likely so, given that it will be a rematch of the historically contentious 2020 race between incumbent President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, with Trump seeking to be the only president apart from Grover Cleveland to win nonconsecutive terms.

Phedra Henninger surely will be casting her vote then, as she did Tuesday and as she has done in every primary and general election since she turned 18.

The South Whitehall woman is a diehard, in other words, though she was reluctant to publicly share her party affiliation in light of how quickly political discourse can devolve nowadays into brute partisan attack.

“It’s scary,” said Henninger, adding that she has voted for candidates in both parties. “It doesn’t stop me from voting and it doesn’t stop me from having those conversations. But the demise of dialogue and open engagement and civil discourse are big red flags.”

That assessment of voting as a right and privilege under threat by the high winds of this discontented era ran like a red-and-blue thread through conversations at polls around Lehigh and Northampton counties.

In Lower Saucon Township, Larry Deibert, 76, said the primary is as important as the general election in the machinery of democracy.

You wouldn’t imagine so, given the sluggish traffic at the polls. In-person turnout, however, isn’t the predictor it used to be, given the increasing popularity of mail-in voting.

In-person voting “hasn’t been the same since COVID,” said a judge of elections at First Presbyterian Church in South Whitehall who declined to give his name.

In Easton, at the Easton Area Community Center, only 11 people voted in nearly three hours, with similar numbers reported elsewhere.

On the other hand, around 17,000 mail-in ballots were collected by Monday night, according to Northampton County Elections Registrar Chris Commini.

Congressional rate driving turnout

Things remained slow into the evening at many sites. Calvary Temple, which hosts voters from District 6 and District 7, was slow Tuesday evening around 5 p.m. It wasn’t much different throughout the day, save for a 2 p.m. burst, according to Melinda Shelly, a Ryan Makenzie supporter who was on her way home from a day of poll greeting. “I’m 75% sure he’ll get it,” she said of the state representative running in the 7th district Republican primary against businessman Kevin Dellicker and attorney Maria Montero.

Marie and Jim Vinup, volunteers with the Lehigh County Republican Committee and supporters of Dellicker, were equally as positive their candidate would win.

“He’s a solid man, a good Christian, and still active in the military,” Marie said. “He isn’t going to be a career politician and we like that.”

Not all precincts remained slow. At Upper Macungie Township District 5, the voting had picked up with more than 400 casting ballots as of 5:45 p.m.

At least a couple dozen cars were in the parking lot at the Islamic Education Center along Tilghman Street.

“It’s quite surprising,” said election judge John Cavanagh, who expected it to remain busy to closing.

He said the U.S. House primary is likely driving turnout.

“It’s very robust considering it’s a primary,” he said. There’s been a get-out-the-vote push for the 7th District race.”

Uncommitted voters

Lehigh Valley voters might have been asked Tuesday to vote uncommitted for President Joe Biden and Congresswoman Susan Wild. Volunteers at polls were handing out flyers to vote uncommitted, said Raya Abdelaal, one of the organizers.

It came from Uncommitted PA, a grassroots statewide coalition formed to let Biden, Wild and other Democrats know that many voters wish to see an end to the human suffering in Gaza since the start of last fall’s Israel-Hamas War.

Abdelaal, who represents a Lehigh Valley segment group, said people were being asked to vote uncommitted just for the primary. “We haven’t decided what we will do for the general election,” she said.

Nagi Latefa of Upper Macungie Township, who came to the Lehigh Valley more than 25 years ago from Gaza, said he voted uncommitted in his Lehigh County mail-in ballot.

Since the war, “I lost my mom; she drank contaminated water and died,” Latefa said. “I still have starving family members there. I feel helpless, hopeless. I can’t do much for them.”

The longtime Democrat said he feels the party has abandoned people of Gaza and their relatives who live here.

“We have been pleading from the president to the congresswoman to do something against this genocide,” he said in explaining his vote. “There has been no sympathy about our struggle and pain.”

Outside the Mary Meuser Memorial Library, annex, which serves as the first ward voting location in Wilson, Ronald Johnson of Wilson was volunteering handing out leaflets for Uncommitted PA asking Democratic voters not to support Biden or Wild.

Johnson said he ran out of leaflets by 6 p.m. “I was with the Pennsylvania State Democratic committee and knocked on doors for Susan Wild,” said Johnson, adding that he would still likely support her in the fall. But he says the movement is to send a message to Democratic leaders over the issue in the Middle East regarding Gaza and the Israel Hamas war, as well as the immigration policies of the current administration, Johnson says he knows of people who’ve come here as immigrants are having difficulty getting the necessary paperwork to begin working.

No issues at polls

Polls weren’t just quiet due to low turnout. There also were no reported issues Tuesday.

It was a far different story in November, when mistakes in programming of Northampton County voting machines caused machines to record votes on judicial retention one way on screen and the opposite way on paper printouts.

Officials said the votes were recorded accurately on the machines, so the outcome wasn’t affected, but the controversy led to the resignation of the county’s director of administration, Charles Dertinger.

Staff writers Christopher Dornblaser, Anthony Salamone, Lindsay Weber, Evan Jones, Tanya Basu and Graysen Golter contributed to this report.