Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti got the overwhelming victory she wanted and needed Tuesday, but her road to re-election is more crowded than four years ago.
This time, Cognetti may face three more challengers aiming to replace her in the Nov. 4 election — construction company accounting executive Trish Beynon, the Republican nominee, plus former Democratic Councilman Gene Barrett and another candidate, Michael Mancini.
For now, the primary election continued Cognetti's streak of dominant election wins.
- Cognetti on Tuesday wiped out former Scranton School Board President Bob Sheridan by a 3 to 1 margin to win the Democratic nomination for mayor.
- In 2021, she faced Republican Darwin Shaw III, who hardly mounted a campaign amid charges of falsifying election documents. Cognetti wiped him out by more than 3 to 1, too. In the primary election earlier in the year, she defeated City Controller John Murray by 2 ½ to 1.
- Even in 2019, when she won a special election to replace corrupt former Mayor Bill Courtright, Cognetti won by 14 percentage points.
In each race against Democrats, she faced either the city Democratic Party's endorsed candidate or the current or former city Democratic chairman.
“(An) election, for an incumbent, is like a report card, and I think we got very good grades on Tuesday. You know, 75% of the Democratic vote is a very healthy margin,” Cognetti said.
Barrett noticed.
A longtime Democrat, he planned to run against Cognetti in the primary. With Sheridan in the race and potentially siphoning off opposition votes, Barrett figured he couldn’t beat Cognetti and bowed out. He switched his voter registration to independent to run against her that way.
After watching Cognetti dominate Tuesday, Barrett isn’t so sure about running any more.
“Well, we'll see. I haven't made a final decision,” Barrett told WVIA News. “(I have to) talk to the people who are involved with me, and kind of look at the whole issue from a practical standpoint and see whether we go forward or not.”
Barrett acknowledged Cognetti “won convincingly.”
“It was a low turnout, but at the same time, she convincingly won and did a great job getting her vote out,” he said.
Beynon earned the Republican nomination by beating Lynn Labrosky in the primary election.
She’s all in and Mancini says he is, too, citing crime, blight and other issues that Cognetti’s opponents raised in the primary.
“I'm in 110%,” he said.
Even if Cognetti wins re-election in November, she may have a less friendly City Council to deal with when her next term starts in January.
At the moment, the five-member council includes three Cognetti allies — Councilwoman Jessica Rothchild, Councilman Bill King and Council President Gerald Smurl.
King did not seek re-election, and Smurl was forced to drop off the Democratic ballot because of problems with his nominating petitions.
That left Cognetti with only one clear potential ally running in the primary, Todd Pousley, and he lost.
Scranton School Director Sean McAndrew, Councilman Mark McAndrew’s nephew, won a Democratic nomination. So did incumbent Councilman Tom Schuster and newcomer Patrick Flynn, a first cousin of state Sen. Marty Flynn, no ally of the mayor.
Flynn had 5,309 votes, Sean McAndrew, 4,346, Schuster, 3,700, and Pousley, 3,482. Two others finished with fewer than 1,800.
Schuster and Mark McAndrew, the current council’s minority, have most frequently tried to block Cognetti’s initiatives. If they add another ally, that’s three votes, enough to thwart the mayor when they want.
If Schuster and Sean McAndrew win in November, presumably that’s the three-vote majority. If Patrick Flynn joins them, that’s a supermajority aligned against the mayor, but Flynn said don’t assume he’ll follow the other three.
“I am absolutely Marty Flynn's cousin,” Flynn said. “I am absolutely Patrick Flynn. I am my own person, and I am committed to doing what is right for the city, whatever I believe to be right for the city, to move it forward and to help out the next generation.”
Flynn noted he and his wife have two sons and just bought the home where he grew up.
“I'm just invested in being part of helping move this city forward,” he said. “And if there's times that that's voting against the mayor, then I'll be voting against the mayor. And if there's times that that's voting with the mayor, I'll be doing that as well.”
Cognetti could get additional help if Smurl runs as an independent and wins. He told The Scranton Times-Tribune in March he would explore doing that. Voting records show he switched to independent on March 18.
Efforts to reach Smurl were unsuccessful.
