Editorial: The Law, the Seat, and the Game Behind the Curtain

In-Kind from the Times!

It was no surprise to see Chris Kelly’s latest opinion piece land today. It reads less like journalism and more like an in-kind donation to the Cappellini campaign. The timing, the framing, and the familiar spin all point to what it really is: a last-minute get-out-the-vote effort dressed up as analysis.

Let’s be clear about what’s happening. Senator Marty Flynn is working to restore cohesion to a Democratic Party fractured by one man’s ambition, Bill Gaughan. The break began long before this election cycle, when Gaughan tried to engineer a process that would favor his pick, Max Conway, after running Matt McGloin out of the county by stacking departments and solicitorships, raising taxes by thirty-three percent, and weaponizing procedure until governing itself became unbearable.

The result was predictable: division, disillusionment, and distrust. But this was never about the Home Rule Charter. It was about control. Specifically, control over county government and millions of dollars in questionable allocations, including funds quietly parked in Children and Youth where a favored law firm continued to collect fees for work already handled by the district attorney’s office and county staff.

So why fight for eight months to keep a seat vacant? Why take a losing case all the way to the Supreme Court? The answer is simple: delay, distraction, and leverage. When the law did not favor him, Gaughan tried to bend it. And when the Supreme Court finally ruled, Chris Kelly dismissed the outcome as “dubious.” That is not analysis. That is partisan fog.

The same court now fighting for its own integrity amid national chaos upheld the law clearly. Brenda Sacco was rightfully seated. Yet Kelly now paints her appointment as if it undermined democracy. On the contrary, it reaffirmed it. The only circumvention of democracy came from those who manipulated process to create an unnecessary election in the first place.

If Cappellini wins, the irony is sharp. The victory would come from an election that never needed to exist, born of a false premise. If Welby wins, the law stands as it should have all along. Either way, what the people deserve is truth, not theater.

But here is what Kelly ignores: behind the curtain, the same law firm tied to Gaughan orchestrated this entire mess. They misled the Abington Democrats, inflamed good people into bad faith, and even approved a smear campaign against Thom Welby, accusing him of donating to Trump over a forty-five-dollar yard-sign joke. They launched that attack on the evening of his sister’s death. That is not politics. That is indecency.

This is not just about a county seat. It is about the sickness spreading through local politics. The confusion. The lack of moral clarity. The surrender of principle to pettiness.

Scranton deserves better. Labor deserves protection. Transparency deserves defense. And democracy, real democracy, depends on those willing to say that a law is still a law, even when it is inconvenient.

What is at stake is not one election. It is whether integrity can survive ambition.