being tallied until Friday, according to Brittney Waylen, a county spokesperson.” ]
Lehigh Valley political watchers must have felt a sense of history Tuesday night. Before the 2023 primary, it had been decades since an incumbent district attorney in either Lehigh or Northampton county lost an election.
Longtime Northampton County DA John Morganelli — the last person to oust a Lehigh Valley DA — served 28 years before winning election as a county judge in 2019.
Jim Martin, who will retire at the end of the year, is the longest-serving DA in Lehigh County history.
“I think it is hard to defeat incumbents,” said Christopher Borick, a political scientist and pollster at Muhlenberg College.
Houck, however, lost his Democratic primary race to challenger Stephen Baratta 55% to 45%, according to unofficial results.
More than 30 years ago, Morganelli defeated incumbent Donald B. Corriere by more than 3,000 votes in a dramatic upset in the 1991 primary. Unchallenged for eight years, Corriere held the office longer than any person in county history — until Morganelli.
Those running for reelection typically have advantages such as name recognition and plenty of campaign dollars, Borick said.
In this case, however, Baratta grew up in the Lehigh Valley and worked as an assistant county prosecutor before serving more than two decades as a Northampton County judge. After retiring late last year to run against Houck, he built a well-resourced campaign, raising more money than the incumbent, according to campaign finance reports.
Those factors “negated some of the built-in advantages that you would expect Houck would have,” Borick said.
“Given that he had some name recognition, it appeared to have paid off in a surprising victory in terms of margin,” Borick said. “I assumed it was going to be a tight race, and to see an incumbent go down by a significant level is a bit surprising.”
Borick, who lives in Northampton County but as an independent was unable to cast a ballot under Pennsylvania’s closed party primary system, said his household nevertheless received almost daily campaign mailers from Baratta. He called the challenger’s campaigning aggressive.
How Baratta won
Morganelli recalled being an unknown 35-year-old in 1991 when he sought to unseat Corriere. He was a public defender; Corriere was seeking his fourth term, and was a powerful figure in Democratic circles.
“I was sort of an unknown when I ran,” he said. “But the difference was we had an intense media campaign. I did tons of press conferences attacking the DA.”
He also ran on a platform of becoming a full-time district attorney; before Morganelli assumed the post, it was a part-time position. That move, he said, resonated with voters seeking law and order, while he also pledged not to take on private legal work.
Morganelli, who picked Houck to be his first assistant district attorney and also has had a close working relationship with Baratta, said the judicial code of conduct prohibits him from discussing the candidates or the race. He said he turned away friends who sought his input on which candidate to choose.
A person who publicly supported Baratta is T.J. Rooney, the longtime state representative in Bethlehem and former state Democratic chair who is now a Harrisburg lobbyist. Rooney contributed $1,000 to Baratta’s campaign, according to spending records, and his son, Leo, is Baratta’s campaign manager.
He makes his permanent home in North Carolina these days so Rooney was unable to vote for Baratta, but he said he supports him despite having “no beef” with Houck.
Rooney also said Baratta won for two reasons: He is a more known figure in the Valley: He grew up in the Slate Belt; worked in Easton with his father, the late attorney Renald S. Baratta; and served decades as a county judge. Houck, who now lives in Forks Township, is a Philadelphia native who spent nearly 10 years as a city police officer before working in various prosecutorial roles for district attorneys in Bucks, Lehigh and Northampton counties.
The second reason, according to Rooney, was Baratta came out swinging on the campaign, describing Baratta as an “insurgent.”
“Steve is known, but he took on the role of a challenger,” Rooney said. Referring to Houck, he added, “If you have a record, you have to defend it.”
“Having an insurgent take out an incumbent is unusual,” he said.
Baratta has criticized Houck on several issues, including the death penalty, gun control, low-level drug prosecutions, cash bail and management of the DA’s office. Houck previously said Baratta ran a “100% negative campaign, and I didn’t respond to it, because I wasn’t going to get into the mud like that.” He said the campaign tone might have contributed to the primary loss.
Morganelli noted that in his political experience, “negative campaigning works.” Besides his DA races, Morganelli campaigned unsuccessfully for several other positions, including state attorney general and Congress.
Party preference
If straw polls indicate anything, Houck would have been the easy winner.
The Northampton County Democratic Committee held an informal vote for various races in late April. Of 33 people who took part, Houck pulled 30 votes, according to Democratic Chair Matt Munsey.
Still, the party did not endorse either candidate, which Munsey said is standard operating procedure.
“Some counties like to make big endorsements,” Munsey said of party committees. “Our bylaws sort of discourage taking sides on an official level and allow individuals to back who they want.”
Charlie Dent, a former Republican congressman from the Lehigh Valley who is executive director of a Washington nonprofit that convenes gatherings of congressional policymakers, said it’s more normal for a political party to endorse its incumbent, in part to give voters guidance.
“If the local party chooses not to endorse in a race where they have an incumbent, that strikes me as an advantage to the challenger,” said Dent, of Allentown.
Munsey, who said he considers Houck a friend, theorized he lost because of his office policies, Baratta’s tough campaigning and their disagreements on issues including cash bail and abortion. In addition, the pandemic covered much of Houck’s first term, which meant fewer people reading or witnessing his work as the county’s top law enforcement officer.
“So it’s hard for voters to have an informed opinion, and they have to go deciphering different messages,” he said.
Munsey said the committee is committed to the primary winner come fall.
“We will be 100% supporting Baratta in November,” he said.
That race could come down to another effort to deal a sitting Lehigh Valley district attorney an election loss. In the absence of a GOP candidate in the primary, Houck asked Republicans to write his name in on their ballot. He said on election night that he believes he received the 250 write-in votes he needed to appear in the general election ballot as a Republican, where he would again face Baratta.
Munsey declined to give his opinion on Houck’s Republican write-in campaign. The Republican committee chair, Glenn Geissinger, said that the local GOP party does not plan to support Houck.
“I don’t want to speculate on that,” Munsey said. “We go with the voters, the same way we don’t put our thumbs on the scales beforehand. We respect the voters’ choice in the primary.”
Write-in vote totals won’t begin being tallied until Friday, according to Brittney Waylen, a county spokesperson. Beginning then, officials from each party will count and tabulate write-in results, which are then checked by the county elections board before they are posted on the county website.
The expectation is final write-in results will be made public within days. May 30 is the date the county election office must certify results, Waylen said. Munsey said in his experience, the county has released write-in results as soon as the Tuesday after the tallying begins.
But he said the wait could stretch longer this year, given the number of local races that relied on write-in votes.
“Everybody has to be patient,” he said.
Morning Call reporter Anthony Salamone can be reached at asalamone@mcall.com.
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