The County Ballot: Who's Who?, Part I

Here's part one of our series looking at candidates for county offices. This time we'll look at the four Commissioner candidates and the two candidates for Sheriff. Stay tuned for our piece on the two candidates for Register of Wills and the two candidates for county Coroner.

County Commissioner: Bruce L. Castor, Jr. (R)

Republican Bruce Castor is almost certainly the most well-known candidate on the county ballot this November, but he also has the unusual distinction of being the only member of the current Board of Commissioners running for re-election. His colleagues on the board, Democrat Joe Hoeffel and Republican Jim Matthews, withdrew from consideration for their respective parties’ nominations early this year after their unofficial December 2010 breakfast meeting at a Norristown diner led to allegations of “Sunshine Law” violations and an ongoing grand jury investigation. Though Castor, 49, was the leading vote recipient in the 2007 elections for county commissioner, he is widely regarded to have been frozen out of county policy-making by the unofficial alliance between his one-time running mate, Matthews, and Hoeffel.

Though he has served as a county commissioner since 2008, Castor is better known for his 22-year career with the Montgomery County District Attorney’s office, during which he prosecuted a number of high profile cases. He was elected to two terms as the county’s District Attorney, from 2000 through 2007, and unsuccessfully ran for the state Attorney General’s office in 2004, losing to current Governor Tom Corbett.

Since leaving the DA’s office, Castor has practiced law at the Blue Bell firm of Elliott Greenleaf. The Lafayette College grad has lived in Montgomery County all his life and currently lives in Lower Salford with his wife and their two children.

Brown-Castor campaign website

County Commissioner: Josh Shapiro (D)

Josh Shapiro is a Democratic member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives. Since he was first elected in 2004, he has represented PA legislative district 153, which includes most of his current hometown of Abington as well as portions of neighboring Upper Dublin Township. He is only the second Democrat to represent that area in the state legislature since World War I.

Prior to joining the State Legislature, Shapiro’s career was mostly spent in Washington, where he served on the staffs of two Congressmen and two Senators, culminating in a four-year stint as chief of staff for then-Congressman and fellow Abington resident Joe Hoeffel. It was Hoeffel’s announcement that he would not seek re-election to the Board of Commissioners that opened the way for Shapiro’s nomination to the office.

Shapiro, 38, was born in Kansas City, Missouri, but was raised in Montgomery County. He is a graduate of the University of Rochester and earned his law degree from Georgetown University. He and his wife, Lori, have two young children.

Shapiro-Richards campaign website

County Commissioner: Jenny Brown (R)

Jenny Brown, who has served on the Lower Merion Township Board of Commissioners since 2006, is a Republican candidate for the Montgomery County Board of Commissioners. She is a founding partner of the Bridgeport law firm of Brown and Silbergeld, P.C.

She is a graduate of Middlebury College in Vermont and earned her law degree at Temple University Law School. Brown, 45, has lived in Lower Merion since 1997. She and her husband, Rick, have two school-aged children.

Brown-Castor campaign website

County Commissioner: Leslie Richards (D)

Whitemarsh Township Supervisor Leslie Richards is unique among the four candidates running for the three county commissioners’ seats in that she is not an attorney. She is a senior project manager for a New Jersey engineering consultancy, where she began working in July 2010. Her staff profile at that firm credits her with more than 17 years experience in environmental planning as well as the management of “numerous municipal and multi-state projects.”

Prior to serving on the Whitemarsh Board of Supervisors, to which she was elected in 2007, Richards served on the township’s parks and recreation board as well as its planning commission. She traces her involvement in Whitemarsh public affairs to 1999, when she was involved in the establishment of the township’s annual community event.

A graduate of Germantown Academy, Richards attended Brown University and later received a master’s degree in regional planning from the University of Pennsylvania. She lives in Whitemarsh with her husband, Ira, and their three children.

Shapiro-Richards campaign website

Sheriff: Eileen Whalon Behr (R)

Former Whitemarsh police chief Eileen Whalon Behr began serving as Montgomery County Sheriff this past spring when Governor Tom Corbett appointed her to fill the position that was left vacant when former Sheriff John Durante suffered a fatal heart attack in February 2010. She now seeks election to the office for the first time, running on the Republican ticket.

Behr, who calls Lafayette Hill home, spent her entire career up until this year with the Whitemarsh Police Department, beginning as a dispatcher at age 19. Her later posts included traffic officer, juvenile detective, and detective sergeant before she was named police chief in 2003.

Eileen Whalon Behr campaign website

Sheriff: Will Holt (D)

Will Holt, the Democratic candidate for Sheriff, retired as a detective sergeant from the Abington Police Department in 2010 after a 42-year career. Born in raised in Abington, where he continues to live with his wife, Regina, he graduated from Abington High School and served with the Army during the Vietnam War before joining the police department in 1968. He was the department’s longest serving officer at the time of his retirement.

In 1990, he co-founded the Montgomery County Black Law Enforcement Officers Association. He is also a former Scoutmaster for BSA Troop 712.

Will Holt campaign website