This week’s biggest Winners & Losers

There’s been a lot of chatter about changes to Pennsylvania’s election laws over the last two years, and while lawmakers haven’t been able to agree on some long-sought, large-scale changes to how elections are run, they made some bipartisan progress this week. The state House of Representatives this week unanimously approved bills from state Reps. Russ Diamond and Gary Day that would remove dead voters from voter rolls and establish new security measures for ballots. Our political system may be polarized, but bipartisanship still exists, as this week has shown.

With Philadelphia City Council meeting back in person at City Hall (well, some members), leadership changes were in order. As a few council members have resigned in hopes of running for mayor, Curtis Jones Jr., councilmember from the 4th district, was voted to replace former Councilmember Cherelle Parker as majority leader. What’s more, Jones will chair council’s Appropriations Committee.

Raise your hand if Satanists were on your 2022 Pennsylvania bingo card. A group of Satanists, led by Ridley native Joseph Rose, successfully lobbied the Garnet Valley School District to alter its dress code policy which sought to prohibit students from wearing clothing with Satanic or cultic references. This is the second victory the group has earned over the last year, as they successfully eliminated a similar dress code policy in Rose Tree Media School District. I guess you could say, the Satanists are hot.

U.S. Rep. Susan Wild’s race against Republican Lisa Scheller is going to be a nailbiter. Not only has The Cook Political Report rated the race as “Lean Republican,” but Wild learned this week that Congressional Leadership Fund, a GOP super PAC, will be spending $7.2 million on a new ad to try and unseat the incumbent Democrat. Wild is running against some strong political headwinds at the moment, and it’s unclear whether she can weather GOP attempts to end her time in Congress.

For the first time in nearly 40 years, a former Philadelphia police officer was convicted of manslaughter for actions while on duty. The former officer, Eric Ruch Jr., was convicted Wednesday for the 2017 shooting of an unarmed Black man. Prosecutors said Ruch acted with reckless disregard when he shot and killed Dennis Plowden Jr. shortly after he crashed his car. Under state law, Ruch could face up to 25 years in prison.

Lesson One: Don’t try and smash your way into the U.S. Capitol building with a pipe. Lesson Two: Don’t routinely violate your pretrial release conditions. It appears Rachel Powell, a Mercer County woman charged with smashing a window at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, had trouble with those concepts. Powell will now be monitored by GPS – which she has to pay herself – after repeatedly violating release conditions, per a ruling from a U.S. district judge. Guess that’s what happens when you try and take a pipe to democracy.