In 183rd, Democratic 'underdog' faces incumbent Republican
In 183rd, Democratic 'underdog' faces incumbent Republican
By Margie Peterson
The 183rd Pennsylvania House District race pits Joe Lenzi, a Democrat who has never before run for public office, against four-term incumbent Republican Zach Mako.
The candidates present stark differences on some policies and hot-button issues. Over his tenure, Mako has supported legislation to restrict abortion while Lenzi says he wants to see the right to abortion, which was once federally guaranteed under Roe v. Wade, codified in Pennsylvania's Constitution.
Mako voted to allow anyone to conceal-carry a gun without a background check or permit. Lenzi says he supports the U.S. Constitution's Second Amendment's right to bear arms but believes more emphasis should be put on gun safety and storage and red flag laws.
The 183rd District spans northern Lehigh and Northampton counties. It includes Lowhill and North Whitehall townships and Slatington Borough in Lehigh County. In Northampton County, it includes the townships of Allen, East Allen and Lehigh and part of Moore Township, and the boroughs of Bath, Walnutport, Northampton and North Catasauqua.
The latest voter registration numbers show Republicans outnumber Democrats 23,546 to 17,125. Also in play at the polls are 6,873 independents and 1,849 voters who belong to other parties.
Mako did not respond to a request for an interview made through the House Republican Campaign Committee. Lenzi was interviewed by phone. Sources for this story also included campaign and state websites and Armchair Lehigh Valley archives.
Zach Mako
According to Mako's campaign website, he is a lifelong resident of the 183rd District, who grew up in Walnutport and graduated from Northampton Area High School. He and his wife Brittany live in Walnutport.
Mako, 35, has a bachelor's degree in finance from Kutztown University and a master's of business administration and international affairs from Penn State University.
He has been a member of the Pennsylvania National Guard since 2008 and, in 2012, was deployed to Afghanistan as a Chinook helicopter pilot for nine months as part of Operation Enduring Freedom. He also served a stint in the Middle East as part of Operation Freedom's Sentinel.
Mako serves on the House Appropriations Committee. He is also a member of the Finance Committee and the Professional Licensure Committee and the Veterans Affairs & Emergency Preparedness Committee.
Mako was first elected in November 2016, defeating Democrat Phil Armstrong, the current Lehigh County executive, to take over the seat vacated by longtime Republican Rep. Julie Harhart, who retired.
In April, Mako defeated Zachari Halkias, a member of the Slatington Borough Council, in the Republican primary, capturing 72.2 percent of the GOP vote.
Mako’s campaign campaign committee started the year with $28,808, carried over from 2023, and since then raised $40,687, bringing the total to $69,495. The campaign spent $42,028, leaving a balance of $27,467 as of Sept. 16.
Joe Lenzi
Lenzi, a 62-year-old truck parts salesman, grew up in Conshohocken and became interested in politics early on. He earned a bachelor's degree in public service from Penn State in 1984. His first job after college was as a canvasser for the Pennsylvania Public Interest Coalition.
Later, he moved to New York City, working in the restaurant and hospitality industries, including in management and sales. He also delved into politics, volunteering on Democratic presidential campaigns, as well as in citywide and statewide races.
He moved back to Pennsylvania in 1999, living first in Bath and – since 2005 – in Northampton Borough. He has three grown stepchildren and a step-granddaughter with his wife Carole.
Lenzi acknowledges that as a GOP incumbent in a majority Republican district, Mako has an advantage.
"I want to give him a run for his money," Lenzi said. "There's a whole bunch of people in the district who don't know who their representative is."
But Lenzi knows he's the underdog in both name recognition and campaign funding. In the filing period ending May 13, Lenzi reported $1,167 in total monetary campaign contributions and receipts, a tiny fraction of what Mako had available.
ISSUES
Here's how the candidates stand on issues.
Property taxes/school funding
Mako: His campaign website says he supports "the fight to eliminate or reduce property taxes." It also says that he works to make sure Lehigh Valley taxpayers are getting their fair share of Pennsylvania state education funds but it does not clarify how he would propose to fund public schools without property taxes.
His campaign website says he supports expanding education choice options, including charter schools, home schooling, vocational training and education scholarships. It does not specify where the funding would come from and whether tax dollars would be used to send children to private schools, including religious schools.
Mako voted no to the passage of the 2024-25 state budget, which contained no tax increases, included a $1 billion increase in K-12 funding and used a new school district formula to make funding more equitable.
In June, before the state budget vote, he voted against House Bill 2370, an education package that included the new funding formula. A 2023 Commonwealth Court decision mandated the state come up with a new formula to make sure economically distressed schools districts were receiving their fair share of state dollars.
Lenzi: Talking to middle-class families like his own has made Lenzi passionate about trying to provide some tax relief for those struggling to get by.
"My biggest position is expanding property tax rebates to the rest of the middle class," Lenzi said. "I would like to see some sort of graduated rebates for families that have an income under $150,000 to get some type of property tax relief."
Lenzi says he favors paying for middle-class property tax rebates by reducing the millions of dollars in subsidies Pennsylvania gives to the oil and gas industry.
Lenzi wants fair funding for school districts. Because school districts are heavily reliant on local property taxes, he said wealthier districts with high-value residential and business properties can afford state-of-the-art facilities and better pay for staff while poorer areas suffer.
"Local schools and districts should be fully funded by state government," Lenzi said.
Lenzi also supports raising the Pennsylvania minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $20 an hour and indexing it for inflation.
"That would make it a living wage," he said.
Currently, Pennsylvanians are having to subsidize low-wage workers with SNAP benefits for food, Medicaid and other programs that help low-income residents, he said.
If those workers in service jobs and other poorly paid fields were making a living wage, the state would not have to subsidize them as much with tax dollars, Lenzi said
Abortion
Mako: The Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation gave him a “leans pro-life” rating on its 2024 voter’s guide.
In 2017, he voted for Senate Bill 3, which would have banned abortion beyond 20 weeks of gestational age. The bill made no exceptions for cases of rape, incest or severe fetal deformities. Then-Gov. Tom Wolf vetoed the measure.
Mako also voted for House Bill 321, which would prohibit abortions because of a prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome. The 2019 measure passed the House and Senate and was vetoed by Wolf.
In July 2022, Mako joined a majority of House Republicans in voting for five amendments to Pennsylvania's Constitution that would, among other things, clearly state that women have no guaranteed rights to abortion or public funding for abortion.
Mako voted yes to 2023’s House Bill 1786, which would prohibit public officials in Pennsylvania, where abortion is legal, from cooperating with authorities in other states from trying to prevent their residents from seeking abortions in Pennsylvania. The measure passed the House but did not receive a Senate vote
Mako voted in favor of House Bill 1140, which would require insurance companies to cover all contraceptive drugs, devices, and other products and services at no cost to the consumer. The measure passed the House 133-69 in June but has not been taken up in the Senate.
He voted in favor of a June resolution recognizing July 25 as World IVF Day.
Lenzi: He says he believes in a woman's right to choose and trusts women to make their own decisions on whether to have an abortion. He'd like to see the decision in Roe v. Wade codified in the state Constitution. Pennsylvania law allows abortions through the 23rd week of pregnancy. After that they are only permitted where the life or health of the mother is at risk.
Guns
Mako: His campaign website says he is a strong supporter of the Second Amendment and opposes "attempts by municipalities from placing unconstitutional restrictions and supports law abiding Pennsylvanians' right to conceal carry."
In 2021, Mako voted for Senate Bill 565, which would have allowed anyone who wanted to carry concealed firearms to do so without going through a background check or having to get a permit. The legislation passed the Senate 29-21 on Nov. 9, 2021, and the House 109-22 on Nov. 16, 2021. Wolf vetoed the bill.
House Bill 770 would have banned owning, selling or making high-capacity semi-automatic weapons. It had a procedural vote to allow it to go to the floor for a vote. That vote failed 87-111 on May 25, 2022. Mako voted against the procedural vote.
House Bill 979 would have restricted the ability of local municipalities to regulate firearms. It would have allowed aggrieved parties to sue municipalities in court and collect damages. It passed the House 124-79 on June 8, 2021, with Mako voting yes, and it passed the Senate Jan. 25, 2022. It was vetoed by Wolf.
In March, he voted against House Bill 777, which would ban the purchase, sale and production of untraceable gun parts, so-called ghost guns. After passage, it was referred to the Senate.
Lenzi: He says he believes in the Second Amendment's right to bear arms but he also supports red flag laws that can result in guns being temporarily removed from a person found to be at risk of hurting themselves or others. Red flag laws allow people such as a family member or police officer to petition a judge for an emergency order for that temporary removal.
More emphasis should be put on gun safety and safe storage for guns, Lenzi said.
"Anyone who's got a gun larger than a handgun should go through a gun safety course before they actually get that gun in their hand," Lenzi said. "They have to know how to store it properly, keep it away from kids."
He's proud of being named a "Candidate of Distinction" by the national group Moms Demand Action, which advocates public safety measures to prevent gun violence and encourage responsible gun ownership.
Voting rights and election integrity
Mako: He was among the group of Republican Pennsylvania legislators who sought to temporarily withhold Electoral College votes from Democrat Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.
The group filed an amicus curiae brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in a lawsuit filed by the state of Texas against Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin over a decision by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court that, among other rulings, upheld Wolf’s decision to extend the deadline for receipt of mail-in ballots by three days over pandemic-related concerns.
Mako voted yes on the GOP's 2021 election reform bill, which would require voter identification at the polls, change the voter registration deadline from 15 to 30 days before an election and create earlier deadlines for mail-in voting. Wolf vetoed the measure.
Mako joined Lehigh Valley Republican lawmakers Ann Flood (138th) and Joe Emrick (137th) in proposing an elections-related bill package — House Bills 2059, 2060, 2061 and 2062 — in response to voting machine errors that happened in Northampton County in November 2023.
Northampton's machines produced a discrepancy between what voters selected on-screen and what appeared on the printout, specifically in two judicial retention questions. Until the issue was resolved, 2,155 emergency paper ballots were used by voters.
Among the measures, the package would provide grants to counties to remediate administrative errors, require enough emergency paper ballots should a problem arise and require counties to use voting machines that mark instead of scan paper ballots.
Lenzi: He said voting rights guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution should not be infringed. But he also said that an election worker should be able to ask for some identification if a voter's signature does not match their previous signatures in a poll's voting book. However, Pennsylvanians should be able to get ID at no cost.
"If we're going to require ID, we should make ID free of charge," he said, adding some people in cities don't drive so they don't necessarily have a driver's license.
Pennsylvania needs a fairer system for redistricting so the party in power — be it Republicans or Democrats — doesn't get to gerrymander, drawing the legislative districts so incumbents have large advantages to stay in power, Lenzi said.