We told you so.
It's now official.
Delaware County Democrats are shuffling their ticket for the fall County Council race.
Jennifer Leith is out, Kevin Madden is in.
Leith, who garnered more than 17,000 votes in the May 16 Primary Election, issued a statement saying she realized during the campaign that she did not have the time to the race. She added she did not make her decision until after the deadline to have her name removed from the ballot.
County Dem leaders appeared to go back and forth about making it official yesterday, not finally releasing statements and confirming our earlier reports until just before 5 p.m.
Until that point, they were sticking to their "official" stance that Leith was still the candidate. This despite the fact that Madden was being listed on their official website as the County Council candidate, and a Madden/Zidnik Facebook page had been posted.
Democratic Chairman David Landau said that although he was sad that Leith would not remain on the ticket, he was excited about the prospect of adding Madden to the ticket with Brian Zidnik.
"Candidates for local office are real people with families and jobs and campaigns are a huge time commitment," Landau said.
As you might expect, county Republicans are dubious about the timing of the switch.
County GOP Chairman Andy Reilly went so far as to accuse county Democrats of deceiving voters.
Or at lest the 17,000-plus who cast a ballot for Leith.
"The county Democratic Party formed a joint fundraising committee with Madden six weeks ago, so it is difficult to fathom why the party's leadership would intentionally keeps this a secret from voters before the primary election," Reilly said.
He wasn't done.
"Deceiving voters by not telling them that a person on the ballot is no longer running is the height of hypocrisy for a slate of candidates claiming to run on the platform of transparency," he added.
You can read our full story here.
Looks like it should be an interesting fall.
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