Hughes owes County a full accounting of what happened
Here’s the deal: If Joe Biden - or before him, Donald Trump - left their car on the side of the Pennsylvania Turnpike, was found wandering around by a rest stop, told police they were in Paris, France and in the middle of a road race, well …
Well, you can bet that many Americans, regardless of their political bent, would be wondering if maybe the 25th Amendment shouldn’t be put into place. There would be legitimate concern the president wasn’t in total control of their faculties, couldn’t discharge the duties of his office, and should be replaced.
Now, granted, Brain Hughes, the longtime county executive in Mercer County, ain’t exactly the president, and the 25th Amendment does not pertain to local officials.
But gee oh gosh, we sure do deserve deeper explanation as to just what Hughes was doing on the night of June 1, at the height of the pandemic, some 120 miles from his home, in a county car, in the middle of Fumblebuck, Pennsylvania, wandering around thinking he’s racing through the streets of Paris.
Again: Gee oh gosh, right?
Now, to be perfectly fair, Hughes who I consider to be a good guy, extremely low on the “greasy political weasel” scale - suffers from trigeminal neuralgia, which sounds horrible. Via The Mayo Clinic: “a chronic pain condition that affects the trigeminal nerve, which carries sensation from your face to your brain. If you have trigeminal neuralgia, even mild stimulation of your face — such as from brushing your teeth or putting on makeup — may trigger a jolt of excruciating pain.” As I said, that sounds horrible. And Hughes told The Trentonian that he takes a drug called Trileptal for the condition, a drug that can cause drowsiness and such and users are told to “gauge their response” to the medication before they drive. He said he clearly had an adverse reaction to the drug that evening, which ended up with him hospitalized in Hershey, Pennsylvania, with his wife being called and his chief of staff, Kelly
Ganges, being contacted and someone coming out to retrieve the car.
“I usually don’t have any reaction at all, and I’m able to function 100 percent,” he told The Trentonian. “This was an oddity.”
I spoke with a few people who either have worked, or currently work, in a position that they might have occasion to deal with the county executive, and all of them told me this seems like an isolated incident, that in recent discussions he was “fully lucid,” and that he has proven capable to do his job and that “I know he’s not like that all the time” and that “he’s doing the best he can.”
So that’s legitimately reassuring, but … but let’s not lose sight of the fact he is the county executive, and while most of us probably aren’t all that aware of the power - both potential and real
- the office holds, don’t kid yourself. Along with an all-Democrat commissioner board, Hughes wields considerable heft in county affairs.
Of course, the Democrats in Mercer County are the near-equivalent of the old Soviet Union: There is no one to check their power, as the county Republicans
are a shell of their former selves, and that shell is cracked and tattered.
Point being, the Democrats could and I’m not exaggerating - run a dead candidate for county executive and still win. A regular “Weekend at Bernie’s”type situation. Simply put, Hughes has no one to answer to, outside of, realistically, this newspaper.
So here’s where I sit on this thing: I think Hughes owes Mercer County residents an explanation concerning the state of his health. Seriously: Imagine if this happened to Biden or Trump. We’d demand an accounting. This should be no different. As voters in a democracy, while we aren’t entitled to every nook and cranny of a politician’s life, once they start wandering around Pennsylvania rest stops thinking they’re in Paris, well … it’s time for a little more in the forthright department.