Presler’s EVA spearheads ‘Vote No’ effort on Dem judge retentions

For most of the last decade, political operative Scott Presler has traversed Pennsylvania and other swing states to get out the Republican vote. Many credit his voter registration work as a major factor in Bucks County’s flip from blue to red last year. 

On the heels of a campaign that helped to make Bucks the first county in the Delaware Valley to back a GOP White House hopeful in over a decade, Presler and his team at Early Vote Action are pressing on with their project to redden Bucks’s political hue. This year, with no congressional, gubernatorial, or presidential candidates on the ballot, he’s seized upon a special message to motivate his fellow Republicans: “Disrupt the status quo. Vote No!”

He means Keystone Staters should oust the Democratic state judges asking Pennsylvanians for retention this year. In the commonwealth, judges from the district level to the Supreme Court stand for election by the voters and then run for retention every ten years as long as they wish to serve or until they reach mandatory retirement at age 75. 

Denying judges a new term is more than ambitious — it’s virtually unprecedented. Twenty years ago, Democrat Russell Nigro became the only Pennsylvania Supreme Court justice ever to seek a new term and fail to win it, a loss he suffered largely due to the infamous pay raise for state elected officials enacted in 2005. Retention losses by lower court judges are also infrequent.

Presler sees a strong chance that EVA and other GOP-aligned groups can generate the sentiment needed to fire Democratic Justices Christine Donohue, Kevin Dougherty, and David Wecht. The headway they’ve made against the Democrats in 2024 is considerable: Republicans now outnumber Democrats by about 9,700 in formerly Democratic-leaning Bucks County. And, according to Presler, the GOP has enjoyed a net gain of 62 voters just between August 18 and 25. That figure includes 43 Democrats who switched to Republican, twice the number of Republicans who did the opposite. 

Presler said EVA, a multi-state organization, has overseen thousands of new Republican registrations in Pennsylvania this year alone, narrowing the gap between the state’s Democratic plurality and its GOP contingent to fewer than 60,000 people. In the quintessential swing county of Erie, only about 5,800 registrations stand between Republicans and a plurality. 

EVA’s representatives attend community events across the state to meet voters in an attempt to chip away at Pennsylvania Democrats’ advantage. Presler particularly looks forward to bringing his message to the Autumn Leaf Festival, an annual Clarion County gathering that usually draws about 500,000 attendees, on October 24 and 25.

To see his aims to fruition, he relies on a Keystone State-based staff of 25, working in every highly competitive county. Shamus O’Donnell, a former Philadelphia election clerk and Pennsylvania Republican field organizer, is one of EVA’s three field directors in Bucks County. This summer, his team racked up a total of 62 new registrations in the county.

O’Donnell, who will soon join the National Republican Congressional Committee to work in support of U.S. Representative Brian Fitzpatrick’s 2026 reelection bid, has been a fixture at events like the Quakertown Farmers Market. 

While encouraging GOP registration and mail-in voting, O’Donnell and his colleagues present event attendees with a handout. On one side, it reads, “HOLD THE DEMS ACCOUNTABLE. VOTE NO TO RETENTION.” (Capitals in the original.) It then lists Donohue, Dougherty, and Wecht with the word “NO” and crossed-out boxes next to each. The flyer reminds voters that the three of them voted to permit Democratic Governor Tom Wolf’s Covid lockdowns, extend the 2020 voting deadline three days past Election Day, and allow the Pennsylvania Department of State to remove Green Party presidential nominee Howie Hawkins from the 2020 ballot. 

That side of the handout also alerts voters to “TWO MORE LIBERAL JUDGES THAT NEED TO GO”: Superior Court Judge Alice Beck Dubow and Commonwealth Court Judge Michael H. Wojcik.

Presler has also made online statements noting Dougherty’s brother is John “Johnny Doc” Dougherty who now is serving a prison term for embezzling $600,000 from the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, the union John Dougherty led regionally.

“If you want justice for Pennsylvania justices that shut you down, that stole the election [via the 2020 voting extention], and that rigged your [legislative district] maps, you vote ‘no’ to retention,” Presler wrote. 

On the flip side appears a positive message urging the election of Republican Superior Court nominee Maria Battista and GOP Commonwealth Court nominee Matt Wolford.

In O’Donnell’s estimation, the entreaty to remove Democratic judges and elect Republican ones is getting a keen hearing in Bucks County. He also said efforts to reelect Fred Harran as Bucks Sheriff and keep Jennifer Schorn as the county’s district attorney are big draws for Republicans as well insofar as they present a law-and-order contrast to Philadelphia’s far-left top prosecutor Larry Krasner. The Bucks County Republican Committee, which EVA considers a close partner along with more stalwartly conservative outfits like RightForBucks, has been giving out bumper stickers saying, “Don’t Philly my Bucks County; Vote for the Bucks GOP.”

“Anyone who we speak to that we tell about the ‘no’ to retention, we tell them about our local offices and who it is exactly that’s up for election, people are pretty fired up about that,” O’Donnell said. “It’s just about making sure enough people know that there is an election this year. That’s the main thing.” 

Such anecdotal evidence, and progress on registrations, signals to Presler that “President [Donald] Trump’s policies are popular and people like the job he’s doing.” The famed activist also thinks Schorn, Harran, and other Bucks Republican row officers now seeking reelection have strong chances to survive this November. But he has also publicly warned his party compatriots against complacency, particularly regarding mail-in voting, something that all voters in the Keystone State can do but which many Republicans resist. 

“If mail-in ballots are still legal at the state level — & Republicans neglect to vote early — we will lose,” he wrote in a recent social media post. Though not himself a fan of the legality of no-excuse absentee voting, Presler’s nonprofit is nevertheless stressing it as a necessity for his party in Pennsylvania and other states where EVA has a presence, including New Jersey, Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, and Wisconsin.

EVA is underscoring another task that Republicans must attend to in order to prevail against the high court retentions: remembering to fill out the back of their ballots where the retention questions will appear. (In 2023, a year Republicans lost a Supreme Court race, approximately 400,000 judicial-retention undervotes occurred.)

The EVA handout also counsels voters to consult their counties about local judicial retentions. In Bucks, Langhorne Democrat Brian McGuffin and Southampton Republican Raymond McHugh are both seeking retention to the Court of Common Pleas. 

That could be a delicate matter for Republicans urging dismissal of higher court judges. In the past, the two major parties have tended to support retaining at least local judges of either party. But Presler said voter education can safeguard local Republicans who have their own retentions to worry about. 

“We are working county parties at the local level where legal and applicable to make sure that we are retaining good judges,” Presler said.

O’Donnell agreed, saying local GOP committees play an especially important role in keeping Republican Court of Common Pleas judges safe as the state-level retention battle plays out.

“We [at EVA] have some really good people, but you’re also working with your local parties as well,” he said. “Typically your committeemen and women have a much better relationship with your voters than we do just by nature of things. So you’re hoping that they have the connection with their voters; if there is a conflict, they’re acting as a buffer of sorts.”

Wecht campaign manager Nick Giorgetti told The Independence he doubts the no-vote campaign will succeed.

“Justice David Wecht has not faced any push-back,” he said. “Justice Wecht stands by his decisions, and believes his opinions, and those he joined, speak for themselves.”

Girogetti furthermore noted Wecht did not side with Wolf on all of his pandemic-related restrictions, recalling that Wecht dissented from the court’s approval of restrictions on gun purchasing during Covid. 

“Shortly after Justice Wecht’s dissent was published, the governor removed those restrictions,” he said, adding that the justice “feels good about the retention campaign [and] has been pleased by the support that Pennsylvanians have expressed.” 

He cited as examples endorsements by the Fraternal Order of Police and other unions. 

Still, O’Donnell has confidence that the movement Presler started can make history this year, touting his boss’s work ethic and asking Keystone Staters to learn how they can participate in it by going to earlyvoteaction.com. 

“I haven’t found many bosses in my time, either [in] private companies or politics, who are as on-the-ground, hands-in-the-dirt, with you on a day-to-day basis like Scott Presler,” he said. “I encourage everyone to pitch in in some way, because Scott Presler walks the walk and he talks the talk.”

Bradley Vasoli is the senior editor of The Independence, where this piece first appeared.