Election Day is Tuesday, Nov. 5. Voters who live in the same district as Carnegie Mellon have the opportunity to vote for seven state and local positions. Here are the candidates on the ballot at the state and local levels.

Voters can find out which polling place they should vote at by checking their registration at pavoterservices.pa.gov.

U.S. Senate, Pa.

Senator Robert Casey (D) is running for re-election. His main challenger is Republican David McCormick.

Casey has been a senator since 2007. He recently sponsored legislation to seal the criminal records of people convicted of federal non-violent marijuana crimes and to expand eligibility for free school lunches. He sponsored a bill altering flood insurance policy, a bill funding community colleges to make it easier to receive an associate degree.

Casey also backed a bill establishing a tax credit for “Qualified Community College Bonds,” legislation that would favor community colleges within large cities and community college which primarily serves African Americans or Native Americans in various specific ways.

Casey is running on a range of issues including environmental conservation, increasing the corporate tax rate, bolstering the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and trade protectionism. Casey has advocated financially punishing colleges which are determined to be “hostile environment[s]” and criticized Betsy DeVos’s contributions to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), a campus-focused free speech advocacy organization.

McCormick was a hedge fund CEO and served as undersecretary in the Department of Commerce. He says that his main issue is lowering inflation. He says that abortion policy should be decided by the individual states (the status quo since the end of Roe v. Wade). He supports military funding for Ukraine but wants other NATO countries to contribute more of their budgets.

U.S. House of Representatives, District 12, Pa.

Representative Summer Lee (D–Pa.) is running for re-election. Her challenger is James Hayes (R).

Lee has been a representative since 2019. Lately, she’s sponsored a bill to require more railroad safety inspections, a housing regulation and price control bill, and a bill that would dramatically raise the minimum wage and raise taxes on high-income people. She’s also sponsored a bill that would make it illegal for states to do anything that makes voting more difficult and a bill removing the special family-owned business benefit from the Consolidated Farm and Rural Development Act.

Hayes has worked in the business and finance industry, including for the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. His issues include deregulating industry in Pennsylvania, supporting law enforcement, and aiding American allies abroad.

Pennsylvania Attorney General

The state attorney general is Pennsylvania’s head law enforcement officer — they are in charge of prosecution for the state. The term of Pennsylvania attorney general Michelle Henry expires this year.

Former Pa. Auditor General Eugene DePasquale and York County District Attorney Dave Sunday are running for this position. (Henry was appointed by former Attorney General Josh Shapiro when he was elected governor.)

According to Sunday’s website, his work as York County district attorney “resulted in a 30 percent decrease in crime during his first term; reductions in the prison population by almost 40 percent since its peak,” and lower recidivism rates. He also co-founded the York County Opioid Collaborative and worked on scam and elder abuse prevention.

DePasquale was formerly a state legislator and an auditor general. Brittany Crampsie, who is a media representative for the DePasquale campaign, told The Tartan that “Whether it’s a student loan company preying on students, insurance companies making health care unaffordable, or ghost gun dealers making cities more dangerous — Eugene is going to fight to give young people a fair, safe shot at making a great life in Pennsylvania.” She also said that DePasquale is still in student loan debt and knows about “student loan compan[ies] preying on students.”

Pennsylvania Auditor General

Auditor General Tim DeFoor  (R) is running for re-election. His main challenger is Pa. House Representative Malcolm Kenyatta (D–Pa.-181). According to DeFoor’s campaign manager, Alex Simmons, the auditor general “is the chief fiscal watchdog of Pennsylvania. His or her job is to ensure that your tax dollars are spent legally, effectively, and efficiently.”

Simmons said that one reason the auditor general is important to college students is that “student aid programs and housing programs are audited by the auditor general, and without strong oversight, we wouldn’t know how these programs are performing for you,” citing an audit of the Pennsylvania Housing and Finance Agency undertaken by DeFoor.

Simmons said that DeFoor is “the only person in this race who is actually an auditor” and that DeFoor “did not swear an oath to the Republican Party during his inauguration, he swore an oath to the Pennsylvania and U.S. Constitution.” He intends to be “an independent fiscal watchdog who ensures that the programs enacted by the General Assembly and Governor work properly” who will not “use the job as a stepping stone for higher office.”

His opponent, Kenyatta, is running because he wants “the underdog to become the watchdog for Pennsylvania’s working families,” according to his website. He plans on bringing the Bureau of School Audits back into the purview of the auditor general, a bureau that DeFoor moved to the Pennsylvania Department of Education. He also plans on starting a “Bureau of Labor and Worker Protections.”

Pennsylvania Treasurer

Pennsylvania Treasurer Stacy Garrity (R) is running for re-election. Her main challenger is Erin McClelland (D). The treasurer manages and invests state savings, deals with abandoned property, and administers several savings programs and other programs.

Garrity’s website says she “is focused on transparency, cutting waste and fees, returning more than $4.5 billion in unclaimed property to its rightful owners, and making education affordable for Pennsylvanians” by expanding PA 529, a college and career savings program, decreasing the minimum deposit and contributions. She also expanded another savings program, PA ABLE, reducing fees. 

McClelland is a longtime substance abuse and mental health counselor. She says that she “will employ the contract oversight authority that the position has to exercise meticulous scrutiny and ensure compliance with all current trade regulations and laws and work diligently to keep the legislature informed of these standards so that nothing is missed” in order to restrict American imports from China. She also supports ending pension privatization.

Pa. State Senate District 43 and Pa. House of Representatives District 23

Senator Jay Costa (D) and Representative Dan Frankel (D), respectively, are running for these offices unopposed.

Costa has been the state senator for Pennsylvania’s 43rd district, containing Carnegie Mellon, since 1996. He has been Democratic floor leader (currently minority leader) since 2010.

Recently, Costa has sponsored a bill to restrict businesses and private clubs in selling or allowing tobacco products and a bill decreasing the amount of tax credit the state can give out to encourage mixed-use development.

He has also sponsored a bill to establish a unit and database to spy on people suspected of being in “hate groups,” and a bill giving the attorney general power to prosecute cases involving “ethnic intimidation” in any county criminal court, and a bill creating the category of “ethnic intimidation.”

Frankel has been our state representative since 1999. Some of the recent bills he has been primary sponsor of have been: a bill proposing further regulations of health insurers, a bill establishing a medical marijuana program, a bill amending smoking regulations, a bill protecting physicians in their contracts with their employers, and a bill establishing the category of “teledentistry.”