Civera expected to resign House seat

State Rep. Mario J. Civera Jr., an Upper Darby Republican who riled Democrats by holding on to his House seat after winning election to the Delaware County Council in the fall, is expected to announce his resignation Monday.

Civera will hand-deliver a letter to House Speaker Keith R. McCall (D., Carbon) Monday morning announcing his retirement, effective April 30, his office confirmed Saturday.

For Democrats, it's not soon enough. Civera kept the House seat long enough to prevent a special election to fill it in the May 18 primary, when the U.S. Senate contest between Sen. Arlen Specter and U.S. Rep. Joe Sestak will likely draw more Democrats to the polls. A special election to fill a state House seat cannot be held until 60 days after the member leaves office.

The May primary, in which Republicans have no race as competitive as the one between Specter and Sestak, could have given Democrats an edge. Democrats outnumber Republican voters by about 2,000 in Upper Darby.

McCall could delay the vote to fill Civera's post until the general election in November. This year, McCall scheduled several other special elections for May 18. He estimated the cost of a separate special election at $200,000, according to spokesman Bob Caton.

Civera could not be reached for comment Saturday.

Civera, 63, won election to the House in 1980. Known in Harrisburg as a moderate Republican, he grew in influence, becoming minority chairman of the Appropriations Committee in 2006.

While campaigning for the five-member council, Civera said he had no desire to hold two offices. In December, he said he would stay in Harrisburg only long enough to "tie up loose ends" in the state's fiscal 2010 budget, including the long-debated table-games bill, which was finally signed into law in January.

Civera resigned from the Appropriations Committee at the end of January, but refused to resign his House seat without a promise that the special election would not be held May 18.

"All I wanted was a level playing field, and I kept telling them that," he said in a January interview at his Upper Darby office.