EYEWITNESS NEWS (WBRE/WYOU) — Another race drawing interest Tuesday night is the unexpired term of former 113th District state representative Marty Flynn.
The Democrat stepped down in the spring after winning a special election to fill a vacant state Senate seat. Tuesday night’s winner is no stranger to Flynn’s district.
Flynn‘s former chief of staff, Thom Welby, declared victory earlier tonight over Republican challenger Dominick Manetti.
Welby had a decades-long career in radio and television broadcasting before eventually getting involved in politics. This is the first public office he’s ever sought.
While he is only filling out the unexpired term of former representative Flynn, Welby hopes to lend his voice to a couple of causes.
One is to bring about a severance tax on the natural gas industry.
Another is to do something about state funding of public schools which he says, as constituted, is unfair to scores of Pennsylvania school districts.
“If you are a representative or a senator and you’re going to go home because of that bill and tell their constituents that the state isn’t going to fund us like they used to, you have to make up another $30 million, we’re going to have to raise your taxes, nobody is going to vote for that in those districts,” Welby said.
Welby also congratulated Democrat Mary Walsh Dempsey who won an open seat on the Lackawanna County Court of Common Pleas.
Welby says at 72, he does not intend to seek reelection after he completes the unexpired term as State Representative in the 113th District which is comprised of 17 wards in Scranton as well as Clarks Green and South Abington Township.
