Lamont McClure enters Northampton County executive race

Jan. 20--Two years after stepping down from Northampton County Council, Lamont McClure announced his plans to run for county executive and defeat incumbent John Brown.

In a news conference at the Northampton County Courthouse in Easton, McClure introduced an alliterative agenda to protect seniors, preserve open space and help working families prosper.

McClure, a Democrat who made his mark in county government by fighting to keep Gracedale under county control, said he would commit to keeping the nursing home and returning it to financial security. He also vowed to return the nursing home to county management instead of hiring an outside firm to overseeing the day-to-day operations.

The 46-year-old Bethlehem Township man also promised to redesign the Department of Community and Economic Development. While Brown has committed more staff to the department than his predecessor, McClure said he has not hired a professional staff with experience of bringing jobs to the county. The county already has a law on the books that can help, a requirement that vendors hire 80 percent of their workforce from the Lehigh Valley.

"I can't remember the last time that was enforced," McClure said.

While McClure, an asbestos attorney for the Peter Angelos law firm in Bethlehem, has 10 years experience on council, he has little executive experience, and none with an organization approaching the size of county government. McClure said he would be guided by his observations of the failures and successes of Brown and former Executive John Stoffa.

"I think I have the experience to work with council to get through to them, sort of as a reverse engineering process," McClure said.

At the same time, he took an aggressive stance against the Brown administration, saying it was critical the first-term Republican be forced out of county government. He attacked Brown for raising taxes nearly 10 percent, hiking workers health care costs and drastically reducing farmland preservation funding. He also accused Brown of promoting people to high-level positions who lacked the prerequisites for the job. While he didn't use names, McClure's comments were a thinly veiled attack on Cathy Allen, Brown's controversial director of administration.

"This is the kind of corruption, cronyism and callousness that must end," McClure said to a small gathering of friends, family, Democratic operatives and reporters.

During their two years in office together, McClure and Brown clashed nearly from the get-go. Perhaps their most visible fight came in November 2014, when McClure stalled all council business for a week to protest severe health care cost hikes to county employees that Brown was planning. After weeks of union protests, Brown rolled back the hikes, which could have seen families pay up to $13,300 in co-insurance costs.

McClure said he initially chalked up many of Brown's decisions to his lack of familiarity with county government. McClure said he's since revisited his early conclusions.

"As I've watched from a distance, it's become clear to me it wasn't an experience deficit, but a deficit in priorities and a deficit in competence," McClure said.

McClure spent much of his 2 1/2 terms as a foil to Brown and Stoffa. McClure opposed many of the major initiatives introduced by the two executives, including Stoffa's efforts to sell Gracedale.

McClure was one of two votes on council against seeking a sale of the nursing home, and he lent his voice to a grassroots effort to block a proposed sale. With McClure at the forefront, the effort forced the county to put the sale to a nonbinding referendum, and about 75 percent of voters opposed the sale. Stoffa and council honored the referendum and ended sale talks.

McClure ran for executive in 2013 and finished third in the Democratic primary, placing behind former Executive Glenn Reibman and then-Bethlehem Mayor John Callahan. Callahan would later lose to Brown despite spending about 10 times more than his opponent.

Potential candidates still have weeks to circulate petitions to get on the primary ballot, but McClure has a clear path at the moment. Councilman Robert Werner, the Easton Democrat on council, announced his candidacy for executive last summer but has since quietly dropped out of the race.

Brown has not formally announced his candidacy, but is expected to seek a second term.

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