MILFORD, PA — Pike County Chairman Matthew Osterberg has a philosophy about running for public office, “I run on my strengths, not other peoples’ weaknesses.” With the municipal primaries just over one week away, however, he can’t help but criticize his opponents’ messages, ones he calls “hollow.”

By the end of the day on Tuesday, May 16, Republican and Democrat voters will have cast ballots for two county commissioner candidates of their respective parties. With only two Democrats running this year—current commissioner Tony Waldron and Habitat for Humanity of New York City CEO Karen Haycox—the real race, for now, is between the four Republican candidates. 

Commissioners Ron Schmalzle and Osterberg are seeking reelection. Matthew Contreras—an education advocate—and Bob Roche—a local Second Amendment advocate—are looking to take their place. 

Neither Contreras nor Roche responded to requests for comment on their campaigns, which have both tapped into hot-button, national topics echoing Trump-era platforms. The sitting commissioners maintain that it’s local issues, not partisanship, that shape a commissioners’ role in the county.

“I don’t look to shake things up, I look to find solutions to problems,” Osterberg said. “I’ll be honest, I don’t hear [Contreras and Roche] talking about solutions to problems.”

Even before running for office, Contreras and Roche have had some experience “shaking things up.” An ardent supporter of parental rights in education, Contreras is the founder of Pennsylvania Advocacy for Children’s Education (PACE), which he describes as an “organic grassroots organization” that combats “government overreach concerning education, health and society.”

According to its website, PACE “value[s] education over indoctrination” and is particularly concerned with topics such as health mandates; freedom of speech; critical race theory; diversity, equity and inclusion; anti-Americanism; and gender identification.

He’s often brought issues like these up to the Delaware Valley school board, calling the school’s enforcement of masking policies “Gestapo-like” at a meeting 2021 and—at the board president’s request—getting removed by police officers from a meeting in March of last year.

Along with Patti Coombs, Roche is a founder of Pike County Second Amendment Sanctuary, which they call a “grassroots effort” to declare local municipalities “sanctuaries” for the right to bear arms. Though declaring a community a sanctuary carries no legal weight, Roche and Coombs say the effort affirms their opposition to appropriating “government funds or resources for the purpose of enforcing any element of new laws, mandates, rules or regulations that infringe on the rights of the law-abiding citizens of Pike County that already allow us to keep and bear arms.”

According to the website of the Rod of Iron Freedom Festival—an annual firearms festival held in Greeley, where they’ve both appeared as speakers—Coombs and Roche have successfully gotten nine townships and the current Board of Commissioners in Pike to sign Second Amendment sanctuary resolutions.

Contreras and Roche are both listed as the candidates of choice on a website called Patriots of Pike County. According to the site, the term “patriots” refers to Pike County residents who support stricter voter ID requirements, and the First and Second amendments. They also oppose national parks, critical race theory, “unconstitutional” medical mandates and government overreach.

Schmalzle said that he believes these candidates are attempting to pull local politics to the “far right.”

“Contreras and Roche are a part of what really is a nationwide movement that started in the Trump administration; they call themselves the patriot group. I’m not sure I really understand what that means, because I believe we are all patriots,” Schmalzle said. “[Osterberg] and I believe that being a county commissioner involves most things that have nothing to do with national politics. It’s about doing good things for people and bringing services to people. Although we’re both conservative and lifelong Republicans, it doesn’t come into play that much.”

Of the things that do in fact come into play for a county commissioner, according to the three incumbents, providing urgent care and EMS; balancing the need for affordable housing with the protection of Pike’s natural resources; and generating more, better-paying employment opportunities are all at the top of the list.

Hospital and urgent care

For years, county commissioners have been working to reverse the fact that Pike County is the only county in the commonwealth that lacks its own hospital or urgent care center. They said that they’re closer now than ever before.

Working with Northwell Health, the largest health-care provider in New York State, the commissioners said an urgent care facility is on track to open in Dingmans Ferry—the county’s most populated area—this summer. Another one near Lake Wallenpaupack is planned to open soon after that.

From there, the commissioners are working on creating a “mini hospital” in Blooming Grove, modeled after a recently opened facility in Lackawanna County that has around two dozen beds and focuses mostly on emergency care, but is not a “full-blown hospital.”

“That’s what we need… an advanced emergency department that would allow our ambulances to get to a location in no more than 30 minutes from any point in the county,” Waldron said.

Schmalzle said that opening up these medical facilities “checks a lot of boxes” for the commissioners, since it would also provide residents with higher-paying jobs. Currently, Woodloch Resort is the county’s largest employer. Schmalzle said that while hospitality will always be important to the local economy, it’s not an industry that offers wages as competitive as the medical industry.

Emergency management

During the initial wave of COVID-19, Pike County was hit with an ambulance crisis, one that didn’t go away even as the pandemic became less dire.

“This is turning into an emergency,” Osterberg said about it at the time. “There’s areas in our county where people are waiting 30 minutes or longer for an ambulance to get to their door. I mean that is scary stuff.”

Although each municipality is technically responsible for handling its own ambulance needs, Osterberg said the commissioners offered to match, up to two mills, the amount that municipal leaders used in taxes to bolster their township or borough’s ambulances. The program raised more than $2 million for EMS services throughout the county.

“We’ve become the format by which you can fix an EMS system,” Schmalzle said. “It has drastically changed what was a crisis into a system that’s working.”

The incumbent commissioners also discussed county issues such as affordable housing, senior living, tick-borne diseases and plans to transform a former PennDOT building into a transportation hub, recycling center and archival center. Check back for further coverage.