School board member challenging incumbent
The 151st District in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives will once again be a battleground between red and blue on Nov. 3.
Incumbent Republican State Rep. Todd Stephens is facing a challenge from Democrat Jonathan Kassa, a current North Penn school board member, to represent the district in Harrisburg. The 151st includes all of Horsham and Montgomery townships and parts of Lower Gwynedd and Upper Dublin townships.
Both candidates were asked the
same questions, and below are their answers.
KASSA
Describe your background and qualifications as a candidate:
My career started at a multi-state nonprofit organization that directed juvenile justice, social service, and education programs, eventually working my way up to an executive position within the organization. I then served as the Executive Director of Clery Center, an organization dedicated to improving campus safety, influencing federal legislation to mandate violence prevention and awareness measures on college campuses. Most recently, I co-founded a small business providing colleges, universities, and K-12 schools nationwide with technology to improve campus safety and equity for students and faculty.
I’ve lived my life in public service to my community and I ran for school board because I saw that our students were being underserved by the board at that time. Since my election to the board, I’ve worked to implement comprehensive school safety strategies, fullday kindergarten, and innovative tax relief for seniors. When I saw that the old way of doing things wasn’t working, I went and fixed it.
Why are you running for this office and what do you hope to maintain or change?
As a school board director, I have seen the consequences of Harrisburg’s failure to provide adequate school funding, as Pennsylvania ranks 44th in state funding to public education. During this pandemic, many local school districts were forced to cut services, hurting our students. The result is higher regressive property taxes to cover the difference, harming our seniors and working families. We need to close egregious corporate tax loopholes, hold charter schools accountable, and make sure Harrisburg funds our public schools.
Pennsylvanians overwhelmingly support common sense gun control measures such as red flag laws
forced to pay for.
How has this campaign season and your campaigning been affected or influenced by COVID-19?
Our campaign has been innovative as we adapted and an assault weapons to these challenges that noban. I’m tired of lip service body was expecting when I from politicians who vote first announced my candifor the same leadership that dacy in January. Since then, kills every effort at sensible we have taken to every posgun safety legislation. I will sible avenue of communibring my expertise in camcating with voters. Phone pus safety and security to banking and social media Harrisburg and actually get may not be quite as persomething done. sonal as door-to-door can
Pennsylvania is one of the vassing, but our grassroots largest polluters in the navolunteer network is robust tion. In my role as a North to the point that we’re comPenn School Board Direcmunicating with more vottor, I took significant steps ers than any Democratic towards reducing emissions candidate for this seat ever by phasing out diesel school has. buses and reducing waste I have spent the past across the district’s nutrition month knocking on doors services programs. It is time from a safe distance with to see some of those same efa mask on. The reception forts from our lawmakers in has been overwhelmingly Harrisburg, instead of handpositive as the result of the outs to big oil. groundwork we laid the past
What are the main differeight months. I’m talking to ences between you and your voters who have been hearopponent? ing my message from our
Simply put, the main difvolunteers and were waitference between my oppoing to meet me to ensure nent and myself is that I am that they were right to connot a politician. I’ve spent sider switching their vote. my career working on biThe voters that I talk to partisan solutions for our want to know about a canchildren’s education and didate’s message and policy safety. I’ve served on the positions first and foremost. North Penn School Board Connecting with my comfor three years and the dismunity on a personal level trict’s performance is curhas helped reassure what rently ranked 17 out of 500 we already know; people are school districts in Pennsick of Washington and Harsylvania. My opponent has risburg and are demanding been in Harrisburg for the a change. past decade serving in the List your website and/or majority party, which has social media pages where landed us at 44th in the navoters can learn more. tion for state funding to pubWebsite: kassaforstaterep. lic education.com
My opponent has been Facebook: @JKtoFlipin Harrisburg voting with The151st Republicans 90 percent of Tw it t e r : the time and he seems to be PA151st framing his entire campaign around hiding his partisan voting record. I’m not afraid of the party bosses in Harrisburg who bankroll campaigns because I’m supported by 17,000 grassroots donations of less than $25 each.
In North Penn, I worked to successfully implement full-day kindergarten even when we were being shortchanged by politicians. I’m going to Harrisburg to fight for public school funding, without sneaking in handouts for unaccountable cyber and charter schools, which our taxpayers are
STEPHENS
@JK a ssa _
Describe your background and qualifications as a candidate (including incumbency).
For the past 10 years, I’ve served as the State Representative for the 151st District. I’ve established myself as an effective, independent voice for our community. Previously, I served as an Assistant District Attorney in the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office, where I served as the Captain of the Sex Crimes, Major Crimes and Firearms Units. I also served in the
U.S. Attorney’s Office Firearms Unit prosecuting Montgomery County’s most violent gun offenders in federal court. These experiences shaped many of my priorities in Harrisburg including: enacting legislation to strengthen our child abuse laws; writing legislation that strengthened penalties for felons who illegally possess firearms; leading the effort in PA to transmit 700,000 PA records to the federal firearm background check database; and introducing evidence-based legislation to address gun suicides and mass shootings in the PA House. I will continue to champion legislation to protect our families and schools from gun violence which has earned me the endorsement of our law enforcement community.
I’ve also led the effort to secure the HIGHEST basic education funding for our schools in state history. That’s why I’m also endorsed by the Pennsylvania State Education Association (PSEA), the organization representing our local teachers.
Why are you running for this office and what do you hope to maintain or change?
Since I was first elected, I have worked across the aisle to deliver real results for our community. Whether it’s $15 million to clean up Horsham’s public drinking water or increasing education funding with Gov. Wolf, millions of dollars in infrastructure improvements in Montgomery Township, improving child abuse laws with Attorney General Josh Shapiro or working with Montgomery County Commissioner Dr. Val Arkoosh to shorten COVID-19 testing wait times from 14 days to 12 hours, I have a record of putting partisan politics aside to achieve real results. In
Harrisburg, we need an experienced leader to help us through this public health and economic crisis. I’ve developed relationships with both Republicans and Democrats in the PA House and Senate along with the Wolf Administration to reach real solutions for our families and businesses, including my bill to provide COVID-19 grants for small businesses.
I will continue to fight for our local schools. I’ve introduced legislation to fully implement the bipartisan Basic Education Funding Commission’s funding formula which would deliver more education funding to our local schools, including $7.8 million in new funding for North Penn. There is also more work to be done on ending gun violence in our communities.
What are the main differences between you and your opponent?
Families are struggling. Sadly many have been personally impacted by COVID-19. Others have lost their jobs or had their small businesses severely impacted. I’ve worked across the aisle to deliver results for our community, including millions of dollars of funding and protective equipment during the pandemic, improved COVID testing response times and my legislation to provide $250 million in grants for small businesses impacted by COVID-19 is pending before the House. Notably, my colleagues and I worked with Governor Wolf to prioritize education funding ensuring districts received record setting funding — without raising taxes.
Unfor tunately, while we’ve been working in Harrisburg to help struggling families and businesses, my opponent has been making their lives more difficult.
Sadly, despite record funding from Harrisburg, and while sitting on $41 million in reserves, my opponent cut services for special needs children while giving a tax break to a wealthy real estate developer building luxury apartments. To add insult to injury, he raised property taxes to the maximum amount allowed by law on seniors, struggling families and shuttered small businesses. While I’ve never voted to raise broad based taxes, my opponent has voted to increase property taxes to the max every year he’s been in office.
How has this campaign season and your campaigning been affected or influenced by COVID-19?
Due to the pandemic, my office has been flooded with calls for help. Initially I was working feverishly to ensure our hospitals, nursing homes and first responders had the equipment they needed to save lives. Once we flattened the curve, we have been inundated with calls for help addressing unemployment claims and support for small businesses. Helping people through this pandemic has been the priority over the typical door knocking or other campaign activities. In a typical election year, I knock on 10,000 doors to check in with my constituents — this year I’ve been to about 3,000 thus far.
Unlike my opponent who has raised more than half of his campaign funds from out of state and is benefitting from an unscrupulous dark money group who refuses to disclose their donors, I typically receive the majority of the campaign funds I raise from local businesses or individuals. Unfortunately many of them are struggling to get by right now and are not able to donate as much as they have in the past which has caused us to redouble our fundraising efforts to compete with the outrageous amount of money being dumped into this race.
List your website and/or social media pages where voters can learn more.
Website: VoteToddStephens.com
Facebook: @ToddStephensPA
I n s t a g r a m: ToddStephens
Twitter: @RepToddStephens @R ep.