The Anchor: Could Janelle Stelson Sink Democrats in PA-10?

Can Janelle Stelson's past be her undoing, or will it fuel her fire in the race for Pennsylvania's 10th Congressional District? Witness a candid unraveling of the Democratic primary as Keystone Reckoning Podcast host, Jesse White, navigates through the murky waters of political campaigns and controversies that could shift the tides in the upcoming elections. This episode takes you behind the political curtain, revealing how a resurfaced indiscretion on the Howard Stern Show has thrust Stelson's candidacy into the limelight, and how her response could spell triumph or disaster on her path to challenging Scott Perry.

Feel the intensity of the political arena as we scrutinize not only Stelson's platform but also the credentials and past records that shape the Democratic hopefuls' bids for the nomination. And it's not just the Democrats in the hot seat; a Republican candidate's surprising party switch and questionable district residency come under the microscope, shedding light on the critical choices voters hold in their hands. As the primary heats up, every move, every alliance, and every misstep could redefine what it means to be a resilient and transparent candidate ready to unify the party and face the rigors of an electoral showdown. Join us for this hard-hitting discussion that goes beyond the headlines and pierces through to the core of what's at stake in Pennsylvania's 11th.

Learn more about the Keystone Reckoning Project at www.keystonereckoning.com

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:30

To paraphrase Bob Dylan, how many roads must a candidate go down before they can call themselves the nominee? Well, in the case of Janelle Steltsen in the Pennsylvania 10th Congressional District, she's got a couple, as far as I'm concerned. Hi, welcome to the Keystone Reckoning Podcast. I'm Jesse White. It is Wednesday, april 10th 2024. We are less than two weeks away from the Pennsylvania primary election and today we're going to be talking about one specific race the Pennsylvania 10th Congressional District. That's where I live, so I'm kind of immersed in the race in terms of seeing all the ads and everything and the operations of all the campaigns. And it's against Scott Perry, who you may know from such hits as hey, let's overthrow the government on January 6th. And no, you may not see my text messages with Donald Trump. I don't care if you have a congressional subpoena or not, I serve with him in the state house. He was a bad guy then. He's a worse guy now. He's got to go. We've all are clearly on the same page with that.

Speaker 1: 1:28

There are six candidates running for the privilege to unseat him. One of them is Janelle Steltsen, who was a newscaster for WGAL TV for, I believe, 26 years 20 some years and has now thrown her hat in the ring along with five other candidates, all of whom, quite honestly, are qualified. A lot of races there's always like that one crackpot. There was a debate last night that actually WGAL hosted. You can see it online. I would suggest to anybody check it out. They all actually are pretty good. You know, there's things I like about some more than others and vice versa, but by and large they're all. They all pass that base competency test Right In terms of you know whether or not they could theoretically at least earn my vote.

Speaker 1: 2:19

And but Janelle there's. She has painted herself as the front runner. You know, kind of there's been some I don't want to say manipulating of headlines, but there's been some word jujitsu to allow her to paint herself as a front runner. And OK, we'll call her, we'll call her the front runner. And there are some issues that have kind of followed her throughout the campaign that have never really been addressed, and I've been watching those. And then something happened yesterday that to me made it rise to the level of something. Okay, we need to talk about all of this kind of edge totality, because there's a there's an underlying purpose behind it. So here's what we're going to do. There are three main issues that I want to talk about that are kind of questions or issues that are hanging out there about Stilton's race. We're going to talk about those. Then we're going to talk about how they've been addressed or haven't been addressed and then why that's important.

Speaker 1: 3:18

Okay, so we're going to start with kind of the most sensational one first. It just came out yesterday. I have actually been sent this clip several times by some other political people in the area and yesterday Shemaine Daniels, one of the opponents or one of the candidates in the primary, who also was the nominee in 2022 and actually did quite well against Perry, given that it was not a funded race nationally, which it will be this year, hence why there are six candidates trying to get the nomination Her campaign released this clip in a press release and the clip I'm going to set it up for you briefly because it's kind of crazy it's a clip from the Howard Stern Show from about 10 years ago. The date doesn't really matter, it's about 10 years ago and on the clip because I'm going to play it for you it's about 45 seconds long and in the clip the Stern Show is listening to, they're playing a clip of wgal, so it's them listening to wgal and in it janelle stelton is anchoring the news and her co-anchor is talking about a cat bar in like belgium, where, like people bring their cats and go and hang out or whatever I don't know, um, and they get.

Speaker 1: 4:32

He mentions that they were also that cat bars are not new and that they are also popular in parts of Asia. To which she then said and this is this is Janelle's quote, of course, because they're making cat tacos out of them and then laughed and laughed and laughed and then threw it over to the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. This is all, by the way, laid out in. There's a great article in today's Penn Live by Charlie Thompson that talks about this and some of these other issues. So if you're looking for a deeper dive, I would highly recommend finding that on PennLivecom. Ok, so I'm going to play the clip for you right now so you can hear it for yourself. It's not that long 45 seconds but I think it bears being heard on its own.

Speaker 2: 5:17

Anchor woman. Now, you would think they would know better. This is an anchor woman trying to undermine her own career. This is a good tape. Like you know, when you're an anchor person, you just keep your mouth shut because it's the cushiest job. All you have to do is read the news. A businessman in Brussels, belgium, has opened up a cat bar. People can get a drink and a bite to eat while enjoying the company of five resident cats. Cat bars, by the way, are not a new idea. The businesses are very popular across Asia, of course, because they're making tacos out of them. That's terrible. That's terrible. Yeah, wow, all right, thank you for watching News 8 at 11. It's a night show starring Jimmy Fallon. We'll see you tomorrow. She's laughing because she knows she's probably going to get fired.

Speaker 1: 6:04

That was a thing that happened and the interesting thing was then the response Right. So what was her response going to be? You know, you go through like the typical checklist of political responses when they're you know you're kind of caught saying something you shouldn't have. Right, you could say, uh, you were you misspoke. Well, were you trying to disparage another ethnic group and accidentally said asians, or you know another animal and say cats? I mean, that doesn't work, right? Um, there's not a whole lot. There's not a lot of ways to spin that, there's just not.

Speaker 1: 6:39

My first question was when I heard it, I was like, well, where was the on-air apology? Right, and because this? I think it was like 2009 when it happened. It was a time when, like, twitter was not quite a thing, you know, it wasn't like now where something like that could have easily gone viral very quickly. It just, you know we weren't quite there yet. You know it was. It was a much 2009, a much simpler time in many ways. But you know the thought would be okay, you say something offensive, you, you do a public apology, you know, you do your mea culpa and you move on.

Speaker 1: 7:12

There's no evidence that that was done and I guess, according to the article that PennLive tried to get a comment from Janelle and instead of actually talking to the reporter, they issued a statement so they could you know kind of you know frame it the way they wanted. Ok, fine, and she says that she apologized. She said, quote my comment was wrong and I apologize for it. At the time this was her statement. I was live on TV for thousands of hours over 38 years and one inappropriate joke from a decade ago is the worst thing they can find and there's more to it, but I'm going to address that in another spot. But then PennLive goes on to point out, quote there is no record of the remark creating any kind of public controversy. Her apologies Stelz's campaign said later Tuesday, were made privately to some viewers who had reached out with complaints. Call me crazy, call me a conspiracy theorist, call me whatever. Does anybody think that there were private apologies made? I'd love for that person to come forward, like you, publicly apologize.

Speaker 1: 8:15

It was racist. By the way, it was not only racist but it's also offensive to animal lovers, like. I've worked with animals a lot in my career and that is. You know, my cat drives me crazy. My wife's cat actually drives me crazy. I wouldn't even think about making a joke to her about making tacos out of it, unless I wanted to be sleeping in the driveway for the next week Just not cool all the way around Instead of owning it you know deflection, you know, try to sidestep it, whatever. And this is kind of what I'm getting at and this is kind of the bigger point, right, because you might think, okay, big deal, but you'll see now there's a pattern here that I think we need to look at.

Speaker 1: 9:04

So let's talk about the next thing, and these have been around for a little while and they're more widely known. One is that Steltsin does not live in the congressional district, and congressional districts are big, right, there are not that many of them in the state. Each one is like over 750,000 people. So PA10 includes Dauphin, cumberland and parts of York County right, big areas. Steltsin lives in Lancaster County. Now Congress, federal Congress is the only office where you do not need to reside in the district to run. So you know that's the phrase carpetbagger, right, you know that applies here Someone that lives somewhere else and moves somewhere to run for office. She's technically not even a carpetbagger, because a carpetbagger, actually, you know, bags up their carpet and moves. She's not moved here.

Speaker 1: 9:53

There's an article from October when she announced, acknowledging she didn't live in the district and she sidestepped it, stepped it whether or not she would move here. It says I'm reading it said that she would address that issue when it arose when she had to deal with it. She has not so far in the primary, said yes, even if I win the primary, I will move into the district. So we can reasonably assume I think the implication is here she's not moving to the district unless and until she's sworn in as a member of Congress. I think that's just reality, until she says otherwise okay, yeah, it's Lancaster County, it's not that far away, it's not all that different. I just got done doing two election cycles in Lancaster County and yeah, it is a little different because it's a different community, it's a different county, it's different people, it's different institutions, it's different ways of doing things. It is different. It's different elected officials, local elected officials, different democratic committees, different organizations. It's different, it's not the same. It matters to some people, it matters to some people.

Speaker 1: 11:06

The third one and this is maybe the most, I think, in some ways damning right, because you can look at some of these other ones and be like oh, it's that political inside baseball, you're trying to nitpick whatever. This last one I think is problematic, trying to nitpick whatever. This last one I think is problematic and it is that she was a Stelton was a registered Republican until January of 2023. So she announced her run for Congress in October of 2023. So she clearly, and that she clearly knew she was doing it before then. So I matter of fact, I'm no psychic, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say, let's see, she changed her party registration to Democrat in January of 2023. I'm going to bet she decided to run for Congress as a Democrat in January 2023. Right, I mean, come on, this isn't hard and, by the way, this is not, this isn't theoretical, this is very clearly public record. We know when she changed it. So that's a real thing.

Speaker 1: 12:10

It was pointed out in the debate last night that by Mike O'Brien, one of the other candidates, that because she tried, so Stelton has tried to kind of dodge it by saying that she was voting by her beliefs. I forget exactly how she said it, but she was trying to imply that she said. Here's what the PennLive article said from today. It says on party registration, steltsin has explained that she gave little thought to her party registration for most of her life as a working broadcaster who was obligated to stay out of partisan politics. She said the Democratic Party has matched her personal political views for some time now and she made the registration switch official last year.

Speaker 1: 12:54

Prior to joining the race was and it's a valid point that because Stelton had voted in the Republican primaries through 2022, she was, by definition, casting votes for candidate to her anti-abortion, anti-union, anti-public education, anti-climate and anti-democracy Right, because that's all there was on the ballot. On a Republican primary ballot. There are no good choices. There are no good choices. The good choices are very, very few and far between. So, by unless she didn't vote which she did so by voting she voted for some of these people that were not anybody that a Democratic primary voter would support. That's problematic. That's problematic. So let's put all of this together. Ok, let's synthesize it. Now. We've got all these ingredients, let's throw them in the blender and see what we come up with. So let's put all of this together. Okay, let's synthesize it. Now We've got all these ingredients, let's throw them in the blender and see what we come up with.

Speaker 1: 13:58

To me, this is one of the best examples I've ever seen of opportunism and the attempt to create an image of a candidate that isn't accurate. It is an attempt to take a shortcut. Let's call this what it is. You voted in the Republican primary and you were a registered Republican. You know what that makes you A Republican. You were a Republican. Own it, own it you were.

Speaker 1: 14:18

You are running for Congress in a place you don't live because you think you have a better chance of winning, because you think Scott Perry is vulnerable and you think that the race is going to be funded nationally and that's where you personally have a better chance of being elected in your mind. For those that don't know, the congressman in PA 11 is Lloyd Smucker, who's not a whole lot better than Scott Perry. He's a pretty bad guy. What's the difference? Well, the district is more likely to flip in PA-10 than it is in PA-11. So instead of standing up for her own community to run for Congress, she's running for Congress somewhere else because that's what's better for her. It would probably be better for PA 11 and the voters there for her to run there. And then we have another candidate in PA 10 that's qualified and we have two good Democratic candidates in theory. But no, we've got to slide over to where we don't live because that's the better odds of getting elected Right.

Speaker 1: 15:21

So there's that kind of like naked ambition. That is just super obvious. The fact that you know, and maybe it's the fact that because you lived in PA 11 as a Republican, you voted for Lloyd Smucker how many times did you vote for Lloyd Smucker? Be real awkward to turn around and run and run against them. Now See how this all kind of meshes together and run against them. Now See how this all kind of meshes together, paints a picture that's not very, not great. It's not great, and so that's all there. And to me even all of that is not necessarily disqualifying. But to me this part is this part that's coming up, is what really? When I was like well, I guess now I have to talk about this, because during the debate last night and also in her statement about the cat taco thing, she made a comment.

Speaker 1: 16:13

When Mike O'Brien talked about her voter registration, her response was, quote you have just given Scott Perry his dream this Dem on Dem violence. I think everybody up here is doing a great, outstanding job in the race. Let's cut it out. Let's keep our eyes on the prize and let's go after the guy who really needs to be gotten rid of. So that's clearly deflection, right, it's self-victimization. You know, instead of having to address the issues which are valid, right, like there are three of them now that are legit, like, having been a candidate and been an elected official, I could tell you I've had to answer for a lot less. A lot less.

Speaker 1: 16:49

In one way, she's probably right in terms of giving you know, you talk about giving Scott Perry his dream. Scott Perry's dream is to run against somebody that can easily be slashed up politically. Scott Perry's dream is to run against somebody that can easily be slashed up politically. Scott Perry's dream is to run against somebody who's barely a Democrat, or is a Democrat with, you know, in name, but with no bona fides or no evidence of being doing anything fighting for democratic causes or democratic ideals. That is, you know, I thought about it.

Speaker 1: 17:20

There's got to be a term for this, right, like, what do you call a candidate like this? And to me and this isn't and I want to be very clear, this has nothing to do with gender, right, it's. It's the gender connotation, is, is Comes with this term, but it's not what I mean by it. It's, I feel like we're looking at a Stepford candidate, right Like it's manufactured. It's being put together from pieces and we have to hope that the veneer doesn't break.

Speaker 1: 17:47

And the thing about that is is that, look, primary elections are crucibles, are crucibles. You put candidates in there, you put the pressure on them and the voters then decide who emerges from that as the best possible candidate to run in the general election. We know that Scott Perry A needs to be defeated. B is not going to be easy to beat. Now there can be many differing opinions about what kind of a candidate it will take to beat him. Reasonable people can differ on that. I think the last couple of cycles, what we've seen in that race with George Scott, then Eugene DiPasquale, then Shemaine Daniels there have been a lot of theories about that which we don't have time for right now.

Speaker 1: 18:31

But the point of a primary is to vet these candidates. Point of a primary is to vet these candidates and I'm sorry, but when these questions are being asked of Janelle Steltsen or any candidate but I'm using Janelle because it happened, it literally just happened when those questions are being asked, you have an obligation to answer them. You owe it to the voters to answer them. We may not like the answers, but we deserve answers. These are not little minor nickel and dime things. And, by the way, if you think that you're if for Janelle, if you think that this is being treated poorly, if you think this is, you know, worthy of victimization, self-victimization, I've got some bad news for you. The second you become the nominee Because maybe you haven't noticed, or maybe you have, because you were a Republican. But they don't play around, they win. They like to win by whatever means necessary. So, being asked some questions in a debate or being confronted with your own words that were broadcast to thousands and thousands of people on live television if you think that's bad, wait until you have to deal with the reality of running in a general election. It's not fun, and the whole point of a primary is to get this stuff out of the way, to find out what candidates are best equipped and best suited, both in temperament and qualifications and everything in between, to be able to withstand that storm and come out on the other side as someone that the voters and the Democratic Party and the supporters will get behind and rally behind. And with it being a presidential year. The stakes are high because down-ballot fuel up ballot results. It matters, it matters a lot. So that, to me, is a huge problem. But I want to go back to the thing that was truly disqualifying was part of her response as the poor me, everybody's ganging up on me turn that she took when questioned about this and I'm going to read it again.

Speaker 1: 20:43

This Dem on Dem violence. Violence is a term that needs to be dealt with very carefully in politics today, for reasons we have talked about on this podcast, for reasons that anybody with a working pair of eyes and half a brain can figure out. There is, unfortunately, real violence in our political system today. Candidates, supporters, people are being subjected to violence in ways we've never seen before or haven't seen in our lifetimes, and it's been normalized by the modern Republican Party from Donald Trump on down, and God knows. There's no bigger enabler of it in Congress than Scott Perry. Right. This hits home. This matters. There is real political violence in our system. People have died. People died on January 6th. Uniformed law enforcement officers died on January 6th as a result of political violence.

Speaker 1: 21:40

For Janelle Steltsen to put herself in that category, as a victim of dem-on-dem violence, is not only incredibly tone deaf. It is patently offensive to people that have actually been subjected to political violence. They are not the same being asked valid questions about your background, your political history and your public remarks that were clearly racially insensitive. Those are not attacks. Those are legitimate questions that, if you are a serious candidate for the United States Congress, you should damn well be expected and prepared to answer honestly and truly. That's how you earn the voters respect. That's how you earn their votes.

Speaker 1: 22:33

But that's not what we're seeing. We're seeing the classic campaign of we are going to tell you what we're seeing. We're seeing the classic campaign of we are going to tell you what we want to tell you about us. We're going to ignore everything else. We're going to paint ourselves as the front runner and then we're going to run out the clock and hope that nobody notices the difference. That's their narrative, by the way.

Speaker 1: 22:50

Here's how that story ends you lose in November. You lose because your entire campaign was built on, you know, a house of breadsticks and it crumbles because you have an enthusiasm gap from people that know you're not sincere and that you are. You haven't done the work to share those values, to earn the right to say you share those values. Maybe you do share them, but you haven't demonstrated it. You feel you look slippery, you look like a politician, and that's not what people want. So, yeah, that act sometimes, oftentimes, will get you through a primary. You'll make it through the primary, but that's not a victory.

Speaker 1: 23:25

The victory is winning in November and in winning the way that she's trying to win. Because there are six candidates in the race, you don't need a clear majority. You can win with a plurality, right. But the real challenge will be then unifying your other five opponents and the way that a race like this is being run, where those opponents are going to. If she wins, they're going to feel as though it was a false win. It was a hollow win, not false. We're not election deniers in this podcast. But if they feel as though it was not an honest win I guess that's the best way of putting it they're not going to back her. And if she wins with 34% of the vote or something like that, the narrative is very simple Well, 60 some percent of the voters voted for somebody else.

Speaker 1: 24:18

I don't see anything about the way this campaign is being run and the way you look at the interactions last night on that stage, at debate stage, that there's any potential to unify. You know there were many instances where the candidates were actually very complimentary of one another about certain things. You didn't see that around her. Now, maybe that's because she's perceived as the front runner, and I get it, I'm not totally naive but this just feels slimy. This feels slimy and I really worry about, if she wins, how this goes, and I don't think it goes well. I don't think it goes well and I think that's what we have to think about as we're choosing our nominee.

Speaker 1: 24:55

We talk about electability. We talked about all these. You know we're all experts, right. We all throw these ideas out there about. You know who should win and how they can win and why they should win. But there's like a baseline right. Like if you want to be the Democratic nominee, there's some basic boxes to check off, and I just don't see them being checked off here.

Speaker 1: 25:15

You know I'm a huge believer that you don't beat Republican with Republican light, or you don't beat Republican in 2024 with a Republican from 2023. In this case doesn't work. I think history will prove me out. Maybe I'll be wrong and then they can pull this clip. I mean, I'm not Howard Stern or anything, but you know. So yeah, capacos not good. Not living in the district Not good. Not living in the district not good. Republican till last year not good. I don't know how you add all that up and say, yes, this should be our nominee. I just don't see it. But I'm not the only one that gets to vote in these things. I have the right to say something about it, and I have. I'm curious to hear your thoughts on it. But yeah, so that's where we sit and it'll be interesting in two weeks to see how this all plays out.

Speaker 1: 26:06

I worry that I kind of know what the script is going to look like and it's going to be problematic. But we have to be mindful of the purpose of a primary. It's not to bandwagon jump. It's to take our obligation to vet candidates seriously, because we need serious people who share our ideals, share our values running for office. It's got to be about the voters, it can't be about the candidates, and everything about this campaign feels like it's all about the candidate and then they just trimmed around the edges to make it fit, try to make it fit, into the election she's running in.

Speaker 1: 26:46

I don't know. I don't know what's going to happen, but I know that as more of this campaign plays out down the homestretch, I think we'll see more of the same. I don't know how engaged voters are to be able to put these pieces together and if they matter to them or not, but if nothing else, I think, based on what we've seen from Janelle Steltsen, I think we're going to see a lot more blowing in the wind. This has been the Keys to Reckoning podcast. I'm Jesse White. We'll do it again tomorrow.