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DA seeks to disqualify felon elected to New Castle council
By Jeanne Starmack
NEW CASTLE, Pa.
The Lawrence County district attorney has asked the county common pleas court to disqualify a newly elected city councilman because he is a felon.
Gary Mitchell, who won one of three open council seats in the November election, has a 2002 felony drug conviction and cannot hold public office under state law, says District Attorney Joshua Lamancusa.
Mitchell sold crack cocaine to undercover agents.
Lamancusa filed a complaint called a quo warranto with the court Wednesday. He is asking the court to prevent Mitchell, now a minister who runs an organization called Rebuilding of Life Ministry in New Castle, from taking office in January.
Mitchell was one of three Democrats who won the three open seats. A fourth candidate, Republican John Altman, asked the court twice to throw Mitchell out of the election process — once when he was a candidate and once before he was certified as a winner by the county board of elections. Both times, the court determined Altman did not have standing to initiate legal action against Mitchell. That standing, the court said, belonged to either the county prosecutor or the state attorney general’s office. If the county and state attorneys refused Altman’s request to act, he would have had standing, the court said.
Altman said he had a letter from the state saying it would defer to the county, but only a verbal refusal from Lamancusa, who believed it was proper under the law to wait until after the election to seek Mitchell’s removal.
Altman did not believe at the time he could offer proof for the record in time to have Mitchell removed from the ballot, though county Solicitor Thomas Leslie, who represented the board of elections in both of Altman’s complaints, said Altman could have subpoenaed Lamancusa to testify he would not act.
Altman represented himself the first time. The second time, he retained an attorney to stay the election certification, but the court still ruled that nothing had changed to allow it to confer standing on Altman.
Altman likened the situation to a stolen election because if Mitchell never had been on the ballot in the first place, he would have won the third open seat. Mitchell had 1,866 votes. Altman had 1,693.
The board of elections argued that state law does not allow it to prevent a felon from being a candidate.
Mitchell has said he has turned his life around and he wants to serve his community. He said he has asked the state for a pardon.
He disputed Altman’s assertion that his being on the ballot amounted to a stolen election.
“I was a qualified candidate by law,” he said Friday. “There’s nothing in state law to prevent me from running.”
Mitchell said he will answer Lamancusa’s quo warranto complaint.
“I will pursue this to the end because I owe it to the voters,” he said.
The court said Friday no date has been set for a hearing.