Harleysville veteran Pennycuick wins seat
Unofficial election results indicate Pennsylvania’s 147th House District seat will continue to be held by a Republican.
Tracy Pennycuick, 54, a firsttime candidate from Harleysville in a three-way race to replace retiring Rep. Marcy Toepel, took the seat by a margin of nearly 5,000 votes, according to results posted by the Montgomery County.
The 147th District is located entirely in Montgomery County and comprises the following municipalities: the townships of Douglass, New Hanover, Marlborough, West Pottsgrove, Upper Pottsgrove, Upper Salford, Upper Frederick, Lower Frederick, Lower Salford and the boroughs of Green Lane and Schwenksville.
She defeated Democrat Jill Dennin, 58, a Gilbertsville resident and member of the Boyertown Area School Board, by 4,842 votes, according to results posted by Montgomery County.
The third candidate, 21-yearold Jared Martin, a student at Penn State University, ran as a Libertarian and collected only 1,187 votes out of a total of 38,595 counted by Thursday afternoon.
In a remarkable election year which saw nearly 83 percent of registered voters cast a ballot in Montgomery County, almost half of them by mail-in, it has taken some time for all the votes to be
counted.
As of Thursday afternoon, ballots received after 8 p.m. on Election Day, as well as provisional and military ballots, had still not been counted.
Contacted Thursday, Pennycuick said “it has been an amazing 18 months.”
A first-time candidate who spent 26 years in the U.S. Army, Pennycuick first had to win the Republican primary in which she defeated New Hanover resident Annamarie Scannpieco.
“Annamarie ended up
working with me on my campaign and she has been a rock star,” Pennycuick said. “I think she knocked on 2,000 doors for me and she’s a lot of the reason I
won.”
Despite much of Montgomery County voting overwhelmingly for Democrat Joe Biden in the presidential campaign, Pennycuick said she is not surprised by her victory.
“My area is primarily red and pretty conservative and I think when voters compared the candidates my qualifications from my time in the military, they realized I was the most qualified,” she said.
Residents of the 147th District will see few immediate changes under Pennycuick. She plans to continue using the Gilbertsville district office operated by Toepel, as well as the satellite office in Harleysville.