ALLENTOWN, Pa. — Josh Siegel, the 31-year-old Democrat who laid out an ambitious agenda of reshaping county government, declared victory Tuesday night in the Lehigh County executive race.
"We won in an absolute landslide!" a jubilant Siegel declared to cheering supporters at his watch party at Simpatico around 10:20 p.m.
Unofficial results on the Lehigh County website showed Siegel, a state representative in Allentown, leading Republican Roger MacLean by 19,831 votes with all precincts reporting.
Incumbent Executive Phil Armstrong said the total included all mail-in ballots as well. The county reported 37.8% turnout, which would be unusually high for an off-year election.
Siegel's apparent victory came amid a dominant showing for Democrats up and down the ballot. Democrats appear to have gained a seat on the Lehigh County Board of Commissioners, and major media outlets declared that three Democratic state Supreme Court justices had been retained despite Republicans lodging an expensive campaign to oust them from their seats.
"I think people understand this moment is not about left versus right. It is not about red versus blue. It is about right versus wrong. This was a clear referendum on the chaos and the corruption and the cruelty that we see in D.C.," said Siegel, who will give up his seat in the state House to become executive.
MacLean, a former Allentown police chief and city councilman, did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment Tuesday evening.
For years, Lehigh County politics have been dominated by efforts to run a lean government. County taxes are lower today than they were 11 years ago, and there's been no tradeoff in government services.
But on the campaign trail, Siegel set lofty goals to address challenges that county government hasn't traditionally attempted to tackle. He made tackling the regional housing shortage a top priority while proposing the county explore slashing property taxes and instituting a 1% sales tax.
Siegel also campaigned on regionalizing police and fire services, a plan that he said would create savings for most residents while improving services.
But all those plans will require buy-in from partners. Creating a sales tax would require approval from the General Assembly, a body that's four months late passing its own budget.
The housing plan calls for borrowing up to $100 million, which would need support from county commissioners. And local townships and boroughs would need to agree to give up at least some of their own control to allow the countywide police and fire plans to launch.
Democrats have dominated the executive race for the past 20 years as the county has increasingly leaned to the left. That would have made a difficult environment for MacLean on its own, but Siegel also outspent him nearly 10-to-1 on the campaign trail.
Campaign finance reports filed late last month showed Siegel collected $447,160 of cash and materials for his race, a near record amount. MacLean, by comparison, raised $46,779.
