Miller has slight lead over Zrinski
Allentown School Board member Nick Miller, a 27-year-old real estate business owner, took a slight lead over Tara Zrinski late Tuesday in a three-way fight for the Democratic nomination in the Lehigh Valley’s new 14th Senate District.
Unofficial returns with 86% of the expected vote from both Northampton and Lehigh counties showed Miller with 7,804 votes, Zrinski with 6,835 and Yamelisa Taveras with 2,927.
Earlier in the evening, Zrinksi had a slight lead over Miller.
The district was changed completely during the once-a-decade legislative map redrawing process carried out by the Legislative Reapportionment Commission.
The process lasted months and resulted in new maps for the 203 House and 50 Senate districts based on 2020 census data. Those maps will be used in elections over the next decade.
The existing 14th District, which will become obsolete at the end of November, includes Carbon County and part of Luzerne. The new 14th is in the heart of the Lehigh Valley and includes parts of Lehigh and Northampton counties.
A major factor in its creation was that no incumbent lives within its borders.
The incumbent of the existing 14th, John Yudichak — the Senate’s
only independent member who formerly was a Democrat — objected to the new maps. He said they diminished representation of northeastern Pennsylvania and called their creation an “act of political aggression.”
Yudichak is not seeking re-election to any Harrisburg office.
The map-drawing commission described the new 14th as a district where minority communities could have an impact on the election, particularly because there is no incumbent.
The district has a voting-age population that is 38% minority community members, and 26% of its voting-age residents identify as Latino. The split between parties among voting-age residents is about 54% Democratic and 46% Republican.
The district stretches from Emmaus through most of Allentown north to the big expanses of Lehigh, Moore and Bushkill townships.
Three Democrats and three Republicans are seeking the seat.
On the Republican side, former
Lehigh County Commissioner Dean Browning had a big lead on two other candidates, Cindy Miller and Omy Maldonado with 86% of the expected vote in.
Unofficial returns showed Browning with 6,391 votes, Cindy Miller with 2,479 and Maldonado with 1,82.
Among the Democrats, Taveras, who is 36 and a Latina, has never run for elective office.
Zrinski 46, has been elected to Northampton County council twice and ran unsuccessfully in 2020 for a seat in the state House.
Miller recently completed a climb to the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro, at 19,341 feet above sea level, in Tanzania, as part of a fundraiser to replace aging equipment in the weight rooms of Allen and Dieruff high schools.
Taveras is program director at an Allentown drug abuse counseling center and, as a diabetic, has been rationed insulin for lack of money. She said her sense of what it means to struggle financially will help her in office.
Zrinski is an adjunct professor and solar energy consultant. Asked about runaway inflation and soaring gas prices, she said she wanted to see an immediate reduction in state gasoline taxes and a move to replace the lost revenue with new taxes on legalized recreational marijuana.