Elephant in the Room: Sparks fly when Farry hits the campaign trail
State Sen. Frank Farry (R-6) used his firefighting prowess while outside a polling place on Tuesday.
Farry was chatting with Tom McCullough, a committeeman and lieutenant with the Lower Southampton Fire Company, just outside the firehouse, when he smelled mulch burning.
“It has a distinct smell,” Farry told Fideri News Network about burning mulch. “Before this rain, it was really dry. We looked around and found a small fire in the flower bed next to a plastic container for cigarette butts.” Someone likely missed the container when they threw out their cigarette stub. But the smoldering mulch was also near the building.
McCullough ran inside the firehouse for a fire extinguisher and the two men put the fire out.
“It could have been a lot worse,” said Farry. “It was a minor incident but as with any fire, if not caught early, it might be something worse.”
This wasn’t the first time Farry, the chief of the Langhorne-Middletown Fire Company, put out a fire during an election cycle.
Farry and a volunteer were door-knocking in Lower Southampton during his first campaign, which was for state representative in 2008, when they looked down Oak Road and saw a house on fire.
A gas barbecue grill that ignited the siding, he said.
They called the fire dispatcher and ran toward the fire.
“We got everybody out of the house,” he said. They used a garden hose to douse the blaze before the firetrucks rolled up.
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Drivers grit their teeth as they pull into a gas station to fill up nowadays. Who wouldn’t want a $250 rebate?
Republican gubernatorial candidate Pennsylvania Treasurer Stacy Garrity slammed her opponent, incumbent Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro, for failing to deliver on his 2022 campaign promise for a $250 rebate for Pennsylvania drivers.
“I realize Josh Shapiro wants to politicize higher gas prices and use them as a political weapon, but the people of Pennsylvania should never be used as Josh Shapiro’s pawn to score political points. Pennsylvania deserves more from our governor, and we definitely deserve a governor who follows through on his most basic campaign promises,” said Garrity.
“Time and again, Josh Shapiro has shown that he is more concerned with his dreams of living on Pennsylvania Avenue than helping hardworking Pennsylvania families achieve theirs. It’s time he follows through on his four-year-old campaign promise and delivers for the people he represents. Rest assured, next year, I will,” Garrity said.
Sam Reposa, a spokesman for the Shapiro campaign, called Garrity, “a reprehensible hypocrite.”
“And the last thing she and her dishonest DC consultants should do is lecture the people of Pennsylvania. Garrity is in 100 percent support of Trump’s reckless war of choice and the disastrous gas price increases it has caused. The last thing we can afford is a rubber stamp for that chaos in the Governor’s Office,” he said.
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Two Philadelphia Republicans undertook write-in candidacies in last Tuesday’s primary: Aaron Bashir, who ran for state Senator in PA-02, and William Small, who ran for Congress in the 3rd District. Both failed to garner the required number of signatures to be on the ballot in November.
Linda Stein is an award-winning journalist who’s written for newspapers in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Arizona. Before joining Fideri News Network, she was the news editor for Delaware Valley Journal. She holds a master’s degree in journalism from Temple University and earned her undergraduate degree from Arcadia University. Contact her at lstein@fiderinews.com.
