In Delco, hot campaign a trois in your mailbox

AN INTERESTING three-way is going on in Delco.

It's pretty hot. And the mailman's involved.

(That was to draw you in. This isn't about prurient pleasures. It's about some unusual, even weird, local politics with lots of mail and potential for broader implications.)

It's a special election happening tomorrow for the state House seat in the 161st District, including Swarthmore and Aston boroughs and parts of Ridley and Springfield townships.

It's due to the resignation last April of Republican Joe Hackett, who won a third two-year term in 2014 but said he wanted to return to his law-enforcement career.

(Guess he just couldn't hack it.)

His leaving triggered a tricky triangle of candidates in a nasty race that some see as a mini-referendum on Gov. Wolf and that others see as just plain strange.

The Wolf-backed Democrat is Leanne Krueger-Braneky, a businesswoman who lost to Hackett last November by 11 percentage points.

The endorsed Republican is Paul Mullen, business manager of IBEW Local 654.

You read right: a GOP candidate in a union-leadership job. He's also president of the Delco chapter of the AFL-CIO.

Eyebrow-raising, no?

And there's a write-in candidate: Lisa Esler, a Penn-Delco School Board member described as a tea party activist.

So we have the beaten, the baffling and the brazen.

We also have outside interest.

Wolf, up to his nose in Republicans in Harrisburg and stuck in a protracted budget battle, was in the district over the weekend rallying support for Krueger-Braneky. He's looking for a win, no matter how minor.

His political committee, Rebuild Pennsylvania, gave Krueger-Braneky $10,000.

"Gov. Wolf believes we need new voices like Leanne in Harrisburg so we can change the status quo by investing in our public schools by finally making the oil and gas companies pay their fair share," says committee spokesman Mike Mikus.

Krueger-Braneky supports Wolf's plans, Mullen not so much, Esler not at all.

Mullen takes shots for declining debates. But his campaign says invitations conflicted with campaign schedules.

Mail wars are intense.

Citizens Alliance of Pennsylvania, a conservative limited-government group, pumped out $40,000 worth of mail hitting Mullen and promoting Esler.

Mullen, the mail says, stands with unions supporting Barack Obama and Tom Wolf, while Esler's "the only true Republican in the race."

A Democratic Party mailer hits Mullen, too. It calls him a "quitter" and a "hypocrite" for leaving the Penn-Delco School Board a few years back after serving six months: "If he didn't bother doing his job on the school board, why would we ever trust Paul Mullen in Harrisburg?"

And a GOP mailer says taxpayers "can't afford" Krueger-Braneky's (Wolf's) tax plan, which Republicans claim would result in a net loss to local taxpayers and schools of nearly $23 million.

The mailer includes photos of very sad- and worried-looking "local" taxpayers.

There was buzz about hard-charging rogue GOP York Sen. Scott Wagner getting involved on Esler's behalf since Wagner won a write-in race just last year.

But a check of Esler's campaign-finance report shows no contributions from Wagner or his political committee, Reform PA PAC, and Wagner didn't respond to a request for comment.

Special elections usually draw lower than low voter turnout. This one has some cable-TV ads, but most of the effort is door-to-door and mail, lots of mail.

Republicans hold a registration edge, but insiders say Esler's campaign could take enough votes away from Mullen to hand victory to Krueger-Braneky.

That would give Wolf and Democrats bragging rights, although Republicans can argue that Esler did more for Krueger-Braneky than Wolf's support or budget ideas.

But three-ways can be tricky. And can lead to unanticipated results.

In politics, I mean.

Blog: ph.ly/BaerGrowls

Columns: ph.ly/JohnBaer