A few weeks ago, I conducted an interview via e-mail with the much maligned Jason Ghergel. For those of you unfamiliar with Schuylkill County politics, Ghergel was the Republican nominee for County Controller in 2007. During the campaign, he gained notoriety for alleged election violations in his race with eventual winner Melinda Kantner, for which Kantner filed a official complaint. Ghergel was accused of “cyber-squatting”, wherein he allegedly bought up domain names associated with Kantner such as www.melindakantner.com and then directed the traffic of that domain name to his campaign website.
According to The Bud Angst Report, Ghergel responded to the allegations by admitting that the cyber-squatting was done with his knowledge by an unidentified person in the campaign, but not by him personally. Moreover, he claimed that there was “nothing wrong with it” and that “he would show that he was a good guy by giving the name back to her”.
Additionally, multiple sources within the GOP have told The Clarke Report, that the domain hijacking was the idea of former Schuylkill GOP Chairman Dan Daub, who reportedly told Ghergel that he was going to do the same thing in his race for 125th District Representative. The Clarke Report asked Ghergel the tough questions as it pertained to this matter and others. Here is what he said:
Clarke Report: You have been dubbed a “party guy” by some pols. Is this a fair characterization?
Jason Ghergel: Not that it really matters now but I unfortunately got pegged as the “party guy” when the truth is that I was not even close. Bud (Angst), whom my family had been friends with for many years, got mad at me for challenging Gary. Because of that he found and managed Kantner. That is why he wrote negative articles about me.
CR: Do you dispute the fact that your father is connected with Jerry Knowles, Jim Rhoades, and Frank Shoeneman?
JG: He had meet Shoeneman for the first time this summer at a fundraiser. He knows Jim the way thousands know Jim, seeing him at chamber mixers and the like. My father’s best friends are Democrats like Dick Higgins. Which, by the way, also made “the party” not like me. Bud WAS a good friend of my father. Had my dad known Jerry Knowles he would of knock his teeth out. If you look at my campaign finance reports you’ll see that I never got any money from any of the party insiders I was tied to. In fact I got more money from democrats then from the people you mentioned.
CR: Speaking of Bud, one of things he reported was that you were recruited by the War Board to run against Gary BEFORE he decided not to seek re-election as Controller, as retribution for his beating Bob Allen in 2006.
JG: Argall and Rhoades gave me some for tickets to fundraisers but not as much as they gave some of the other row office candidates. I had worked very hard for that nomination. I had personally met almost every committee member, made calls, wrote letters. Even after securing most committee members support (the War Board) tried to replace me with a few people they thought would be better candidates. Their choices wouldn’t run so they got behind me. Gary, who is a friend of mine, took advantage of an opportunity when he ran against Allen. I took advantage of an opportunity when I ran.
I was not recruited, I had to work hard for the nomination because I thought I could do a good job as controller. I started telling people I wanted to run for controller before Gary lost to Seip. I did this with the assumption that Gary would win. When he lost I had already talked to most of the committee and felt that I walked to far down the path to turn around. I talked to Gary about this and he understood which is why he supported me. He took me door to door and wrote letters for me. Look at the results of the Hegins vote, other then Matt and Jackie I was the high vote getter.
CR: So then, here’s the million dollar question . . . Did you intentionally buy up domain names associated with Melinda Kantner and intentionally direct them to your campaign website? If so, did Dan Daub advise you to do so?
JG: The redirection to my site was actually an error. I had also registered many variations of my name. I wanted to forward my names not Kantner’s, but I must have hit “select all” or something when I did the forwarding. By the way, this was only for about seven days until I saw it and fixed it. One note, as you can imagine I know alot about domain names now. When you cancel a domain name they erase any record of ownership, I don’t know why. In your blog you talk about Dan’s activities. Without any proof you could open yourself up to a slander lawsuit, which Dan is not above doing.
CR: Since the election, have you been involved with politics in the GOP?
JG: I read your letter to the editor and agree with most of what you said. That night we had a party meeting and some were complaining about the letter. I told them that we need to ask people like you to help us not get mad at them for saying out loud what most people already know.
CR: Well, since you are still pretty active, do you have any plans for future runs?
JG: I have a very successful business, I have a great wife and two great kids. I work for myself, with my dad and brother in a very low stress business. Right now, my only problem is my 4 month old not sleeping through the night. I had a great time running. It was very, very time consuming but very rewarding as well. However, I feel like I “scratched that itch” so I doubt that I’d ever run again.
1 Comment
March 14, 2008 at 7:54 am
Thanks for the interview. I hope we have a chance to talk some more someday. One comment on your article. I just want to make it very clear that I alone am responsible for the domain name issue. Although there were some people who pointed me down that path, the decision was mine, and mine alone. Thanks again.