Scanlon and Galluch vie for the Pa. 5th Congressional District seat – The Delaware County Daily Times
Both U.S. Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon, a Swarthmore Democrat, and Republican opponent Dave Galluch have their own approaches to addressing the ills of the day, most of which are in line with their respective political party as they challenge each other to serve the residents of Delaware County in the 5th House District in Congress.
Each candidate outlined why they should be the choice to serve the district.
The incumbent said her 30 years of service to Delaware County as a Wallingford-Swarthmore School Board member, community member and public interest lawyer is key.
Scanlon spoke to her congressional service.
“During my four years in Congress, I have successfully sponsored and passed bipartisan legislation to bring thousands of jobs to the district, protect Social Security and Medicare, rebuild aging infrastructure, reduce health care costs, protect our environment, and invest in our communities,” said the 63-year-old married Swarthmore mother of three adult children.
And, she spoke of the work she wants to continue.
“We must do more to protect essential American freedoms, including the right to vote in free and fair elections, the right of women and their families to obtain contraception and reproductive health care, and the right to be free from gun violence,” Scanlon said. “In recent years, the Republican Party has abandoned common sense and ordinary Pennsylvanians as it has allowed election deniers and right wing extremists to set its agenda. My decades of grassroots service in our community have given me an unmatched depth and breadth of experience and relationships regarding our most pressing local issues.”
Should he be elected to the seat, Galluch said he would focus on problems that impact all people, such as inflation, crime, education and health care and not put extreme ideology and partisan politics over people.
“I am not a politician or a lawyer,” he said. “I am a proud, everyday American who served my country in the military. We are in need of public servants who will do just that: serve the public and not their personal interests.”
Raised by a single mom after his dad was killed by a drunk driver before he was born, Galluch graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 2012 and did two overseas tours. There, he said, he saw the best of this country while working with men and women of all races, creeds and religions “to achieve our mission.”
“Unlike congresswoman Scanlon, who represents the far left, Progressive wing of her party, I will work across the aisle and take tough but bipartisan positions that reflect the will of our district and will deliver commonsense solutions for us here in Delco, Montco and Philly,” said Galluch, 32, who resides in Newtown Square with his wife.
Backgrounds
Having served two terms in Congress and co-sponsored over 400 bills, Scanlon was appointed to serve as vice chair to the House Judiciary Committee and also serves on the House Rules Committee and the Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress.
While at the University of Pennsylvania, she volunteered at the People’s Emergency Center. Previously, she was pro bono counsel at Ballard Spahr LLP for 15 years, supervising over 600 lawyers in 15 offices and served as president of the Wallingford-Swarthmore School Board.
A University of Cambridge and U.S. Naval Academy graduate, Galluch is a 32-year-old former naval officer who lives in Newtown Square with his wife, Caroline. He works in Strategic Development and Growth for Comcast Corp. While in the service, he served as a Special Operations Officer – Explosive Ordnance Disposal, disposing of Improvised Explosive Devices in deployments in the Middle East and in Somalia.
Priorities
Galluch didn’t want to limit his service to one priority but emphasized his vision.
“Our nation’s promise is that every man, woman, and child should have the opportunity to work hard and achieve their version of the American dream,” he said. “Serving should be about developing opportunities so every individual can achieve and flourish.”
Growing businesses and jobs, lowering the costs of essentials like groceries and gas, enhanced educational opportunities for parents and children and addressing crime and violence are among the issues he’d like to confront.
Above all, he’d want his service to focus on “opening and widening opportunities for all to create better lives than those they have today.”
For the congresswoman, the defense of the democracy and core American values remains an utmost priority.
“We have seen baseless attempts to overturn Pennsylvania elections at both the federal and state level, and those efforts continue at great cost to both the stability of our democracy and to our taxpayers,” she said. “I have worked to ensure access to the ballot for decades, as an election official, poll worker, voting rights lawyer and advocate for election reform. I have seen the many ways people in power try to disenfranchise voters.”
Scanlon said the ability to have voices heard in free and fair elections and have elections respected with the peaceful transfer of power, are essential to the success of the democracy.
In addition, she added, “I will protect essential privacy rights — to reproductive health care, contraception, and marriage — from efforts by an extremist minority to strip those rights against the will of the majority.”
Inflation
Both candidates also have opinions on how to address the historic levels of inflation and its impact on the public.
Galluch said President Biden and his allies in Congress have done little to offer immediate relief from the rising cost of gas and groceries – with average households paying an addition $5,000 for such essentials, but made it worse with nearly $5 trillion in new borrowing in less than two years.
Congressional spending must stop, he said, while incentivizing participation in the labor force and growing wage and productivity-enhancing employment that allows families to stand on their own with dignity. He also stressed the importance of strengthening American supply chains, onshore manufacturing and renewing domestic energy production.
Scanlon noted complicated reasons for inflation, including COVID and Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, and said the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act — paid through corporate taxes — set to reduce the national deficit, slash kitchen table costs, create good-paying jobs, and deliver the largest climate investment in our nation’s history.
She said Republicans haven’t offered any solutions, while blocking legislation to lower prescription drug costs and prevent price gouging by gas companies.
She said Democrats have lowered prescription drug and health care prices while addressing supply chain issues as well as releases from the strategic reserve to bring gas prices down.
Abortion
With the recent U.S. Supreme Court reversal of Roe v. Wade, both candidates gave their views on access to abortion.
Scanlon said federal protections should be reinstated as evidenced in her support of the Women’s Health Protection Act and the Ensuring Access to Abortion Act, which allows Americans the ability to travel out-of-state for abortion services.
Galluch, whose wife was adopted and who knows women who’ve had medically necessary abortions, describes himself as a pro-life candidate.
However, he believes in exceptions for rape, incest, and life of the mother and wants to have conversations with consensus of state lawmakers.
Climate change
Climate change solutions were also offered by the candidates, with the incumbent focusing more on reducing emissions and increasing clean energy jobs and the opponent looking to existing resources such as utilizing natural gas reserves.
Scanlon said the Inflation Reduction Act invests $300 billion in climate solutions and environmental justice with a goal of 40 percent emissions reduction by 2030.
In addition, she said any climate change agenda must include significant resources to ensure workforce development, retraining, and a just transition for the hardworking Americans employed by our energy sector. She encouraged Pennsylvanians to take advantage of jobs in the clean energy sector.
Galluch said today’s current needs should be balanced with a vision of a cleaner tomorrow.
For him, that means supporting the energy sector with Pennsylvania natural gas, making long-term investments in nuclear power, and funding basic research that will allow alternative forms of energy to become viable at scale and economically competitive.
He noted Pennsylvania has more natural gas than Saudi Arabia and it produces 40 percent less carbon dioxide than coal and 30 percent less carbon dioxide than oil.
School funding
Scanlon said she would continue her fight for equitable education funding.
“Pennsylvania’s public schools have long suffered from having one of the most unfair funding systems in the country, a system in which a children’s educational prospects are determined by the property taxes in their ZIP code, and many low income seniors and families struggle to pay those taxes,” she said. “In addition, Pennsylvania’s charter school legislation diverts public funding from public schools without holding charter schools to the same standards.”
Scanlon said she fully supports the current litigation challenging the commonwealth’s school funding formula and urge the Pennsylvania Legislature to adopt a funding formula based upon the actual costs of meeting students’ educational needs.
Her opponent said he likewise would work so all students have access to a high-quality education, irrespective of where they live.
“Public schools — which are failing our children in many areas, particularly in our cities — must be improved, but they are not enough,” Galluch said. “I firmly believe parents should have the ability to choose a public, private, or charter school that best meets their child’s needs. This choice has gained even more importance in the wake of COVID and the many developmental and academic delays prolonged closures created in our children.”
He said trapping students in public schools is not the answer if those schools are unable or unwilling to address serious curriculum, safety and educational standards.
Marijuana
With regards to marijuana, Scanlon said it is an ideal subject for federalism and that the states should continue to experiment with the best approaches to regulating recreational marijuana, as they have with medical marijuana.
She added that the federal government should remove obstacles to the state laws, primarily by descheduling marijuana as a controlled substance so that banking and other essential services can be accessed by those who are engaged in legal enterprises involving marijuana.
And, the congresswoman added, federal government should also facilitate continuing research concerning the impact of marijuana on developing brains so states have necessary information to create regulations to protect young people.
Galluch also said he supports ending a federal marijuana prohibition.
“This would give states the power and flexibility to enact their own legislation regarding marijuana-use free from federal interference,” he said. “As it stands, this issue is best managed by each individual state as opposed to a top-down, Washington-managed approach.”
He noted the pain relief it provides for many patients as well as the $8 billion spent nationally on the cost to police it.
“With the rise in violent crime across major cities in the United States, including Philadelphia, our law enforcement officers are better served keeping violent criminals off the streets than policing marijuana use,” he said.
Social ills
For Galluch, one of the largest social challenges in this country boils down to one word: respect.
“Respect. Respect for institutions, history, law enforcement, and most importantly, people,” he said. “Solving serious problems has to start with a renewed respect for each other.”
He pointed to law enforcement as an example.
“As an example, crime is on the rise,” Galluch said. “As law enforcement is blamed and we see calls to defund the police, even from my opponent Mary Gay Scanlon, respect for law enforcement is diminished. Criminals are emboldened when politicians throw blanket blame on the police. Here is the truth: the acts of a few bad officers do not make all law enforcement bad. That goes for any group of people.”
And, respect needs to start at the top, he said.
“High ethical standards, a moral compass, and a respect for the office you hold and the people you represent are sorely needed,” Galluch said. “Elected officials represent us, not special interests or their own ideology. Is it any wonder confidence in our ability to overcome our greatest challenges seems to be diminishing when we feel we can no longer trust our leaders to tell us the truth and put our interests in front of theirs?”
And, it’s something that needs to be cultivated.
“Respect is a two-way street,” the Republican said. “Let’s stop the overheated political rhetoric and weaponized protests and start a meaningful dialogue. It is time we all work to restore respect and earn it from others.”
Scanlon said one of the largest social ills facing the United States is childhood poverty.
“Aside from the fundamental immorality of allowing children to go hungry or live in poverty in the richest nation on earth, our failure to prioritize ending childhood poverty hurts all of us,” she said. “Poverty is one of the greatest indicators for gun violence which plagues our region. When children live in poverty, they struggle to succeed in school and have greater physical and mental health challenges.”
With a third of children living in poverty in the region, the congresswoman said tools such as the Child Tax Credit, which expired in 2021, help reduce it.
“Investing in our children by reinstating the expanded Child Tax Credit and providing access to affordable, quality child care, will yield social and financial benefits to those children, their families, and our community as a whole,” the congresswoman said. “Even better, these proposals have long enjoyed bipartisan support. ”
The U.S. 5th Congressional District includes all of Delaware County, small portions of Chester and Montgomery counties and South Philadelphia.