Editorial: Sydney Hovis should have dropped out before primary election

There are few hurdles to clear when running for a local or county office.

Are you an adult? Are you a felon? With most positions, that’s about it. At the very least, that gets you to the next stage where you can circulate petitions and register your candidacy.

It is an intentionally open field. The idea is that any citizen can run for a role in the community. That’s important because everyone should be involved. It also is good because the more people who do participate, the less likely we are to have power concentrated in the hands of just a few people who settle into office like it’s a comfortable chair.

The problem is that it can invite people who aren’t serious about their involvement.

Is that what happened with Sydney Hovis?

The 28-year-old Scottdale mother of three put herself forward in the Westmoreland County commissioner race earlier this year, running on the Democratic ticket. It did not take long to realize she would make it through the primary and end up on the November ballot.

The commissioner seats are uniquely structured in Pennsylvania politics to be bipartisan. While many people can run in the primary, the top two vote-getters on each side advance to the general election. The top three are seated as the board of commissioners.

The Republicans had a slate of five to pick from: incumbents Sean Kertes and Doug Chew and challengers John Ventre, Paul Kosko and Patricia Fritz. Kertes and Chew won. The Democrats had just two candidates: Hovis and former Commissioner Ted Kopas. Barring a wild write-in campaign, both would move on and they did.

But Hovis has been relatively silent for an active political candidate. The announcement Monday that she was withdrawing from the race is the most noise her campaign has made all year.

While Democrats are scrambling to fill the now blank spot on the ballot, is this really a surprise?

In June, then-Commissioner Gina Cerilli Thrasher announced she was resigning early to accept a position on the Pennsylvania Workers’ Compensation Appeals Board. In July, the county’s 11 Common Pleas judges appointed Kopas to fill out her term, choosing him from a field of five people applying for the position.

Hovis was not among them. If she was not interested in taking the job a month ago, it is hardly a shock that she no longer wants to pursue it now.

It is, however, a disappointment.

It isn’t because she squandered a potential win — although based on the primary votes, she might have come in third, edging out Chew and flipping the board to Democrat in a GOP-dominated county and courthouse.

It is because she damaged the process.

The party isn’t supposed to be the arbiter of who gets on the general election ballot. The voters are. The voters picked Hovis. It might have been from a narrow field, but more people chose her than chose no one or wrote in another name. Dropping out less than three months before the election negates that choice.

There are not a lot of hurdles to running for a county office, but one unwritten one should be a good, hard look at whether this is really something someone wants to do.

Even before being elected or being sworn in, the simple act of stepping forward is a kind of commitment that should be considered carefully. And if you are going to drop out, the time to do it is before the primary.