Dec 14, 2017 3 min read

Post-election campaign spending documents show independent magisterial candidate Jesse Pettit broke even, while his opponent, Jacob Machel, wound up just over $10,000 in debt.

Pettit, an attorney who is scheduled to be sworn in next month for a six-year term as district judge in the Peters Township area, spent $15,755 between Oct. 21 and Nov. 27, while Machel reported expenditures of $15,409 during the same period.

The candidates flooded district residents’ mailboxes, advertised on Facebook and in print, and dotted the landscape with signs.

Machel, who reported paying $8,156 to the Brabender Cox LLC agency of Pittsburgh for his direct mail, also recorded a robocall.

Pettit’s graphic designer was Andrea Zeiler of Breinigsville, Lehigh County, to whom his committee paid $710, while the Print and Copy Center of Verona reaped $8,408 for mailer and mailing services and yard signs.

The debt of the Friends of Jacob Machel Committee was listed as $10,187. Once Pettit paid a $1,320 bill for his victory party, his committee reported $0 remaining in its treasury.

Machel, who ran unopposed in both the Republican and Democratic primaries in May, received the most votes in the Nov. 7 contest in Finleyville, where only 56 ballots were cast in the magisterial contest; Nottingham 1; and four of the seven precincts in Union Township.

But Pettit was competitive in those precincts, where Machel’s largest vote margin was 72, according to official results compiled by the Washington County Canvass Board.

Pettit, who filed over the summer as an independent, carried all 12 of Peters’ precincts plus Nottingham 2, racking up triple-digit leads in the Robinhood Lane-Lakeside area and the corridor west of Route 19. Both candidates have Peters addresses.

Twenty-one precincts comprise the magisterial district, where incumbent James Ellis circulated nominating petitions for another term but announced on the deadline day for petitions to be filed that he intended to retire at the end of this year.

A Democrat and a Republican attempted to capture write-in nominations during the primary against Machel, a commercial real estate broker, but his advantage of having his name on the ballot was, for the time being, insurmountable.

Machel shunned an invitation to appear with Pettit at a candidates forum sponsored by the League of Women Voters of Washington County during the closing days of the general election campaign.

The magisterial district judge position pays $89,438.

Meanwhile, both candidates who competed in the only countywide race during the off-year election ended the reporting period in the red.

Republican James Roman’s committee spent $1,366 during the final weeks of the campaign for recorder of deeds. Roman, a Peters resident who works in real estate sales, personally reported a debt of $11,462.

Democratic incumbent Debbie Bardella, who won her sixth four-year term, reported campaign debts of $51,852. She began the reporting period with $52,734 in debt, spending $1,438 to retain the office.

Her committee raised $3,450 during the reporting period, spending $2,744 on advertising.

The recorder’s office pays $82,775.