State Rep. Dawn Keefer has some unfinished business she wants to attend to in a fourth term of office
Keefer, who represents a northern York County state House district, puts getting state spending under control at the top of her list.
Keefer, 50, of Franklin Township, has backed the Taxpayer Protection Act, a proposed constitutional amendment that would slow the growth of government spending by tying it to the rate of inflation and population growth. She wants to see to it that gets implemented.
“That’s not a silver bullet but it at least puts some kind of constraints on it,” Keefer said.
But to continue her work on that issue, she needs to get past her Democratic challenger Dan Almoney, 44, of Newberry Township.
A political newcomer, who works as a video producer, knows he faces an uphill climb in this predominantly Republican district, but said he finds voters share his desire to have good schools and safe communities but are frustrated with the incumbent’s performance.
Among examples he said they cite are Keefer’s vote against this year’s budget that provided $95 million for school safety grants and $95 million for school mental health grants.
“When you are voting against school safety funding weeks after the school shooting in Uvalde that claimed the lives of 19 children, that’s not going to sit well with some people,” Almoney said. “But it’s not just about challenging Dawn. It’s about doing a better job and having a plan and those are things I don’t think she brought to our community.”
The candidates take opposing positions on abortion.
Keefer wants further restrictions on legalized abortion in Pennsylvania. She voted for a proposed constitutional amendment that would establish that there is no right to a taxpayer-funded abortion - a move opponents say would set the stage for future limits to abortion access.
She co-sponsored the heartbeat bill that would ban abortions once a fetal heartbeat is detected. In the prior legislative session, she cosponsored a bill banning abortions solely based on a prenatal diagnosis of Down Syndrome.
Almoney’s wants to protect reproductive rights as they are now.
He said at a recent rally for Democratic U.S. Senate candidate John Fetterman, “It’s weird being the feminist in a race against a woman who doesn’t believe in that choice.”
Almoney lists as his other priorities: fighting to protect citizens’ rights to health care and providing discrimination protection for LGBTQ individuals. He also supports raising the state’s $7.25 -an-hour minimum wage and governmental reforms including a lobbyist gift ban, term limits. He also favors open primaries and allowing counties to begin the process of opening mail-in ballots and getting them ready to be counted much earlier than 7 a.m. on Election Day.
Keefer’s other priorities include continuing regulation reform. She faults state lawmakers, past and present, for shirking their duties by writing general laws that leave it to the executive branch to come up with the rules and fees for their implementation so lawmakers “don’t have to take ownership of a decision somebody may not like.”
Keefer succeeded in getting a bill enacted allowing property owners to mark their property off-limits to trespassers with purple paint.
Another of her successful bills stiffens the penalties for individuals convicted of guiding the suicide of a minor or individual with intellectual disabilities. Keefer said the attention that legislation drew also served to raise parents’ awareness about who their children are communicating with online, which is how a constituent accessed information on how to commit suicide.
Keefer has shown an independent streak by breaking with Republican leaders on a variety of issues. She didn’t support five of the last six budgets, based on what she called government overspending. Just last week, she opposed the $2.6 billion tax credit package that benefits targeted industries and unleashed her fury in her remarks on the House floor.
“This is government picking winners and losers and small businesses usually seem to be on that losing side. We need to get out of the way,” she said to her colleagues. “We’ve done tax credits for decades and we’ve gotten nominal results. We lost population. We lost businesses. … But you know what, let’s do another round of tax credits.”
She said with a reasonable tax code those kinds of policies wouldn’t be needed.
Almoney also opposed that bill, saying it gives subsidies to natural gas corporations “to come and destroy our environment some more.”
Both candidates agree on the need for providing school property tax relief for homeowners. But when it comes to other educational ideas, there is less common ground.
Keefer favors school choice and letting money follow students rather than giving it to systems. She blames declining standardized test scores to public schools “wading into mental health and all these other things” beyond academics. She also is dismayed with the rising investment in education while student enrollment is going down and the number of administrative staff being hired is rising more so than the number of teachers.
Almoney, on the other hand, calls for fair funding for public schools and holding charter schools to the same standards as district schools. He favors doing away with standardized testing, supports increasing teacher pay, and is against book bans.
Almoney is critical of his opponent’s decision to sign on to a letter to the state’s congressional delegation urging members to dispute Pennsylvania’s 2020 electoral college results.
He said, “I’ve had a lot of discussions with Republicans who are upset about what transpired down in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6 and everything involved with that. I have to remind them our representative was on the [state] Capitol steps on Jan. 5, the day before, shouting about a stolen or illegal election.”
Keefer defends her challenges to those election results. She said she heard from an overwhelming number of constituents following the 2020 general election to do something to restore integrity to the process.
As a member of the House State Government Committee, she said she spent more than 50 hours in hearings uncovering information that led her to believe that counties and the Department of State did not follow election laws. Keefer said she feels the processes and protocols still in place today do not engender trust that election results are accurate.
She said knowing where her constituents’ stand on issues like election integrity and engaging with voters sets her apart from many of her legislative colleagues and gives her an advantage when it comes to representing the 92nd House District.
Almoney said he believes it’s time for some new blood and new ideas.
“I want to make Harrisburg work better,” he said. “As a citizen, I’m just tired of the BS that goes on up in Harrisburg.”
The 92nd House District includes these York County communities: Carroll,, Fairview, Franklin, Monaghan, Newberry, Warrington and Washington and part of Dover townships and Dillsburg, Franklintown, Goldsboro, Lewisberry, Wellsville and York Haven boroughs.
Jan Murphy may be reached at jmurphy@pennlive.com. Follow her on Twitter at @JanMurphy.
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