I am in a suburban Philadelphia county of about 500,000.  Our current recorder is not seeking reelection and is running for county commissioner instead.  Like a lot of other counties in this country, our recorders and similar county offices tend to be handed out as political plums to people who have worked several years for the local dominant political party.

Often the candidates chose by party insiders have no background or aptitude for the job, which usually results in big problems for searchers, surveyors, and others who work with the office.  This is especially true now that we live in the age of computerized recording systems and electronic recording.  The odds that someone will come along and make some irreversible mistake are too great.  Pennsylvania already has already had quite a few example of this and even our own county is missing several years of computerized records for this very reason.

I am writing to the group in general for some advice regarding the idea of running title searchers for the office.  There are several examples from around the state (and country) of people from title backgrounds running and winning, but the odds are usually against someone without political connections.  We are hoping to run someone for recorder without the benefit of any inside political backing (which appears to have already been locked).  We are even thinking of running one person for each major party in the primary election in May since various circumstances have suddenly made it possible for either major political party to start winning offices in our county – quite a change from the last 130 years.

My question for the group is if anyone has any thoughts or advice about running title searchers for political office, especially what can be done with other people in the local real estate industry (title agents, underwriters, realtors, real estate lawyers) to help even the odds out of running against an established political machine.  What about running one searcher for each party?  (PA’s primaries are closed, so only people registered with a particular party can decide that party’s candidate and independents can only vote in the general election – so running two searchers in the primaries will not diminish either’s pool of potential voters).  I was hoping to present two candidates to the public as an attempt to take politics OUT of the office since there is nothing political about the job and show that we are genuinely worried about unqualified people taking control of the office.  However, I’m concerned that such a move would be spun in a more cynical light by the established machines.

Any thoughts and especially experiences will be greatly appreciated.

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