I have two daughters in a Pennridge elementary school. That is why I am voting for Bradley Merkl-Gump in the May 19 Democratic primary for Pennsylvania Senate District 16.
Three years ago, Pennridge made national news for all the wrong reasons. A Republican-led board hired a far-right curriculum consultant to rewrite our schools’ lessons. His prescription: Hillsdale’s 1776 Curriculum, drawn from Donald Trump’s 1776 Commission report. Pennridge teachers objected publicly. They know the difference between teaching history and teaching propaganda.
While this played out, the damage piled up. Books vanished from shelves. Marginalized students were scapegoated for political gain. Teachers were demoralized. Resignations more than doubled.
Brad Merkl-Gump is a middle school social studies teacher. He had every reason to keep his head down. But like me, he has young kids in Pennridge. For him, it was personal.
So in 2023, he ran for Pennridge school board on a Democratic slate. The district had three registered Republicans for every two registered Democrats. Against the odds, the slate swept all five seats. Two years later, the Democratic majority grew to 8-1.
Trained librarians select the books now. Teachers can teach again. The drama is over. The headlines have stopped. The schools are doing what schools should do. The focus is back where it belongs: on educating kids, not fighting culture wars.
That did not happen by accident. A public school teacher decided to serve, and a grassroots parent movement had his back.
Now contrast that with the man Brad wants to replace.
Senator Jarrett Coleman won the State Senate District 16 seat in 2022 with more than $500,000 from Jeffrey Yass, the richest man in Pennsylvania. Yass has one driving political priority, he wants public dollars diverted to private and religious schools. He said so to the Washington Post in December.
His preferred vehicle is Pennsylvania’s voucher tax credit programs, which he profits from himself. A recent report found that entities tied to Yass and his Susquehanna International Group partners collected over $30 million in tax credits from those programs between 2017 and 2023.
Here is how it works.
Yass writes a check to a private school scholarship fund. Pennsylvania gives him back 90% of it as a tax credit. He layers federal write-offs on top. He comes out richer than when he started.
READ: Pennsylvania Taxpayers Are Subsidizing Discrimination at Private and Religious Voucher Schools
That is the grift. Yass donates to Coleman. Coleman then votes to expand the voucher programs Yass profits from.
Every dollar Harrisburg gives a billionaire in voucher tax credits is a dollar that does not reach our public schools. School boards make up the difference somewhere. That somewhere is cuts to education or increased property taxes. When you write your school tax check this year, understand: part of it is going straight to Pennsylvania’s richest man.
So it should not surprise anyone that Republicans are nervous about Brad. A public school teacher running against a billionaire-funded incumbent is a matchup voters here have not seen.
In the past two weeks, two attack mailers landed in my mailbox calling Brad a “party boss puppet.” They attack him from the left. I found that odd. Brad is the newcomer, running against a candidate in the primary who has already run for this seat twice and lost the general both times.
So I read the fine print.
The mailers were paid for by a brand new PAC called Protecting Our Democracy, registered with the state on April 15. Its chairman is a Harrisburg vending company owner whose business depends on unregulated skill games. Its treasurer also serves as treasurer of Operators for Skill PAC, the political arm of skill games giant Pace-O-Matic.
That same treasurer’s personal giving goes to Republicans like Greg Rothman and the House Republican Campaign Committee. Operators for Skill PAC and its executives gave Coleman nearly $400,000 last year alone.
That is who is paying to call Brad a puppet. Republican-aligned skill games money, laundered through a PAC born three weeks before the primary. They are going after the Democrat that Coleman’s biggest backers do not want to face in November.
They are not just trying to take Brad down. They are trying to hand the nomination to Mark Pinsley. Why? Maybe Brad is harder to beat. Maybe he is harder to buy. Either way: buyer beware on May 19.
Brad is a public school teacher who has already beaten a MAGA takeover of his own school district. He knows how to win in red territory. He knows what a fully funded classroom should look like, because he stands in one every day. And the interests profiting off Coleman are spending real money to stop him.
Brad stood up for my kids. I will be forever grateful. Now I am proud to stand up for him.
