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When I announced that I would run for Clerk of Courts, I was a little surprised by the reaction by some of my friends in politics.


“Isn’t that kind of a boring job?” they’d ask. “You’re a much more dynamic a person than a position like that.”


Well, on first blush, it might seem that way, but for a number of important reasons, it’s a job that holds great appeal for me. During my publishing career, I was the guy who got sent into struggling or failing publications to turn them around. I think that makes me ideally suited to manage the clerk’s office, which seemingly time and again has been filled by people with little or no management background. I’ve had line-item responsibility for budgets more than five times larger than the current clerk’s office budget.


The Clerk of Courts is the chief administrative officer for the county's criminal court system and we should take it seriously.


So, okay, I can make the case for competence, but how will this impact the Democratic Party and the progressive movement?


In my opinion, there's been some issues with the management of the office, particularly in terms of expenditures and moving toward better integration of technology to both save money and improve services. Ideally, we would be able to strea

Mike McGann discusses the current county government with Jury Commissioner Martha Smith.

mline the system so the courts can better handle the current caseload as well as what is likely to be a growing burden in the future. By running the court system in a more efficient manner, it would free up funding for other services.


However, from a bigger view, it would be a sea change. According to our research, no Democrat has won a row office since before the Civil War. The Democratic Party has been effectively shut out of the discussion of how our county is to be governed for more than a century and a half.


By electing a Democrat, it would signal to both parties that they now need to be more accountable, because realistically they could really lose if they don't do a good job, something that hasn't been the case for generations. Plus, to be blunt, it would change the political economics of the county and make it easier for Democrats to raise money, something that may well have a major impact in the 2010 Congressional races, not to mention the Commissioner race in 2011.

 

Why The Clerk of Courts Race Matters to Chester County

By Mike McGann