More than 900 local Republicans will have a chance this week to decide who leads the county’s GOP committee, an organization that represents the largest number of registered Republicans statewide.
The catch is they’ll only have one candidate to vote for — Jason Richey, a former candidate for governor who lives in Sewickley.
The current county chairman, Sam DeMarco, is stepping down to focus on his role as southwestern Pennsylvania regional director for U.S. Sen. Dave McCormick. The election to replace him is Saturday at the county’s Republican headquarters in Green Tree. Members either can vote by absentee ballot — which must be in the committee’s hands by Friday evening — or vote in-person from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday.
Initially, there was three candidates running for the chair: Mr. Richey; Doug Austin, chair of the Richland Township Republican committee; and Anthony Golembiewski, an activist from Lawrenceville who aimed to clean the county’s voter rolls in 2024.
But Mr. Austin and Mr. Golembiewski said Wednesday that they had dropped out of the race. They said they disagreed with signing a nondisclosure agreement, before getting access to the contact information for more than 900 committee members.
Mr. Golembiewski said that signing that NDA “tied his hands” from getting anybody to help him campaign. Mr. Austin, who lost by less than 40 votes in a race for the county chair in 2022 to Mr. DeMarco, said he dropped out because he believed that the NDA, among other factors, created an unfair election environment.
Mr. Richey, however, said he also had to sign the NDA and that all three candidates participated in at least two to three forums before various committee members. Mr. DeMarco endorsed Mr. Richey, but the latter denied that meant he was “hand-picked” from the start of the race.
There are some factions of the local party that might want to divide members, but all three ran under the same conditions, Mr. Richey said.
“I’m a known entity because I’ve run for governor but I’ve never held a party position… this will be my first position officially with the party, and I haven’t held elected office, so by any definition, I’m not an insider,” he said.
Mr. DeMarco said Wednesday the reason the committee has the NDA is to prevent candidates from using committee members' contacts for purposes other than campaigning for chair. That way, members’ names won’t be released to third parties or used to advance certain political causes outside of the jurisdiction of the committee.
“If you’re running to be head of the committee, you should be willing to go out and campaign,” Mr. DeMarco said.
He added that Mr. Richey’s success has less to do with his endorsement and more that he was the only serious candidate of the three running.
First Published: February 19, 2025, 7:32 p.m.
Updated: February 20, 2025, 1:18 p.m.
