2 more candidates join crowded field in the 7th Dist.
A Republican tax attorney who also owns nine Wendy’s restaurants and a Democratic ex-prosecutor who’s prosecuted high-level criminal gangs in Delaware County are adding their names to a sizable crowd in the race for the 7th Congressional District.
Greg McCauley of Chadds Ford, a tax attorney, and Ashley Lunkenheimer, a former assistant U.S. attorney, are now seeking to replace Republican Congressman Patrick Meehan, who decided not to seek re-election after a sexually harassment scandal.
McCauley is a 61-yearold married father of four whose law practice of 35 years focuses on tax issues. He and his brothers also own nine Wendy’s restaurants throughout Pennsylvania and New Jersey. “I’ve been involved in a lot of businesses,” he said. “I get involved in a lot of small businesses and help a lot of entrepreneurs.”
He explained his reasons for running.
“I think that Washington is just lost and it needs some common sense,” McCauley said. “I think I’m a reasonable person and I want to bring common sense back to the table. Both sides are just so far apart. If they could just sit and talk, we could make great strides for our children.” He identified student debt and opioid addiction as critical issues that need serious attention.
“It’s one crisis after another,” McCauley said. “We need to get together and solve the problem and they don’t do it.”
Regarding immigration, he added, “I really don’t want to hear what immigrants expect from us. I want to hear what they’re going to do for us.”
However, McCauley said, “The biggest issue is always jobs. Jobs relate directly to the economy. If we don’t have a growing economy, we can’t all have the life we want to live. Forty million people don’t want to be on public assistance.”
He said it was integral to get infrastructure changes and to get unions and trade jobs back to work.
“The sooner they’re back to work, the sooner we’re going to start thriving,” he said.
McCauley added that children should be given other options than college for life after high school, particularly with student debt ranging from $30,000 to $200,000.
“What kind of job are they going to get to pay for that?” he asked. “When you’re a tax guy like me and you see your electrician who’s 30 years old working down at Marcus Hook making $160,000, we are totally misleading our children telling them they have to go to college.”
McCauley said he plans to attend the county GOP nomination committee meeting and he believes
that it will be difficult to endorse one candidate with the field of those who have come forward with good credentials.
Lunkenheimer, a 43-year-old Media married mother of three, has committed herself entirely to the campaign, having quit her job as senior counsel at AmeriHealth Caritas two Mondays ago. She explained why. “I was compelled to do it,” Lunkenheimer said. “I think we’re going the wrong direction in health care with the Trump administration and the Republican legislature who are enabling that administration.”
She said removing 13 million people from the health care rolls, including 28,100 in the 7th District, is not the way to go.
“There are people who are having important dialogues about how to go forward,” Lunkenheimer said, adding that the Affordable Health Care is not perfect, but it’s a start.
She also stressed the importance of early childhood education.
“People need to be able to afford it,” the mother of 6-, 7- and 8-year-old children said. “It’s expensive.”
She also spoke of educational equity.
“It doesn’t matter which part of Delaware County you are from,” she said, “you (should) have access to a quality education.”
And Lunkenheimer stressed wages and business support as a way to bolster the economy.
“The current minimum wage of $7.25 isn’t enough to keep people out of poverty,” she said. Yet, she added that discussions need to take place about what the appropriate rate is to raise people out of poverty.
Lunkenheimer added, “Here in this community, there are a lot of small businesses. We need to be working to help those small businesses succeed.”
From 2007 to 2016, Lunkenheimer served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and there she helped dismantle “The Cut-Off” gang terrorizing Highland Gardens and the “Rose and Upland” gang whose area former D.A. Jack Whelan described as “a hotbed for violent activity and homicide.”
From there, she went to AmeriHealth Caritas, where she worked to help expand Medicaid in Pennsylvania.
She and her wife, Starla, made the decision for her to run together, as they’ve taken different children to Philadelphia and Washington marches and even registered people to vote outside the Media Trader Joe’s.
Lunkenheimer said it is their hope to direct their children how to participate as a citizen.
“We want them to be engaged in their world in a healthy way and keep them away from the rhetoric that is unhealthy,” she said.