In 138th, Democratic newcomer seeks to unseat Republican incumbent
Incumbent Republican state Rep. Ann Flood is facing Democratic newcomer Jared Bitting in her bid for reelection to a third term in the 138th District.
The 138th covers Bangor, Chapman, East Bangor, Pen Argyl, Portland, Roseto, Stockertown and Wind Gap and Bushkill, and Forks, Lower Mount Bethel, Plainfield, Upper Mount Bethel and Washington townships, with part of Moore Township.
Flood did not respond to a request for an interview made through the House Republican Campaign Committee.
On her state website, Flood said “caring for others isn’t simply what she does – it is the very essence of her identity” and that is what led her to run for office the first time in 2020.
Bitting, a teacher who lives in Bushkill Township, said he wants “to help my local community.”
“I really feel like I can take my skills as a problem-solver, and my deep sense of empathy and put them to use to listen and communicate with my constituents and colleagues for the betterment of Pennsylvania,” he said.
The 138th saw no competition in the primaries.
The latest voter registration statistics show Republicans with 23,836 voters in the 138th and Democrats with 16,720. Independents and third party members make up the rest of the 10,052 voters.
Flood’s campaign committee had $47,782 in cash as of May 13, a total that included $21,540 left over from the 2022 election. Bitting had $3,599 in cash on hand as of May 13. The next campaign finance report is due Oct. 25.
State representatives serve two-year terms and earn $106,422 this year. The salary is adjusted annually based on inflation. Democrats hold a 102-101 majority in the House of Representatives.
ANN FLOOD
Background
Ann Flood, 50, is a Wind Gap native who graduated from Pen Argyl Area High School and earned a bachelor’s degree in biology from Moravian University.
She lives in Moore Township with her husband, Daniel. Flood has a son Jake and daughter Ella. Her other daughter, Lauren, died at age 4 in 2007 from a brain injury sustained at birth.
The next year Flood founded Lauren’s Hope Foundation, a nonprofit that funds hospital equipment used to treat children with brain injuries, helps families pay for uncovered treatment and provides specialized equipment to allow children to remain at home.
Foray into politics
Flood first ran for state representative in 2020, seeking to replace Republican incumbent Marcia Hahn, who decided not to seek reelection after serving 10 years in the state House.
Flood won the election with 56% of the vote over Democrat Tara Zrinski, now the Northampton County controller. She was reelected two years later with nearly 63% of the vote over Democrat Gene Hunter, who, like Bitting, was a first-time candidate.
In the House, Flood serves on the Appropriations Committee, Labor and Industry Committee, Liquor Control Committee, and Aging and Older Adult Services Committee. Flood also serves as deputy chair on tourism for the Policy Committee and is a member of the Governor’s Advisory Commission on Women.
ISSUES
Abortion/Women’s Health
The Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation gave Flood a “leans pro-life” rating on its 2024 voter’s guide. In 2023, she posted a photo of herself at a Pennsylvania March for Life in which she said, “We have joined together today to advocate for greater protections for unborn children in the state of Pennsylvania.”
Flood voted yes to a constitutional amendment package that included language stating that women have no guaranteed rights to abortion or public funding for abortion. The 2022 measure failed to move on after Democrats took control of the House in 2023.
She voted in favor of 2021’s House Bill 118, which would require the burial or cremation of abortion remains by hospitals or clinics with penalties for failure to do so. While approved in the House, it was not taken up by the Senate.
Flood 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.
She 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.
She voted in favor of a June resolution recognizing July 25 as World IVF Day.
Budget
Flood 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.
Before the budget was adopted, Flood remarked on Linkedin that “Majority House Democrats and Gov. Josh Shapiro are continuing to push a plan that spends more than $48 billion. That’s $3.7 billion, or 8%, more than the prior year and, more importantly, it’s beyond anticipated revenue for this fiscal year.”
Education
According to her website, Flood said she is focused on securing funding for Pennsylvania’s schools, colleges, universities, trade programs and other educational institutions.
In June, before the state budget vote, she 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.
On Facebook, she said the proposal “would place a massive burden on taxpayers while providing no accountability and no meaningful measures of success.”
She voted for Senate Bill 1154, which would create a Performance-based Funding Council to develop a new system to distribute funding to the state-related universities. It was signed into law in July.
Voting/elections
Flood 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 then Gov. Tom Wolf’s decision to extend the deadline for receipt of mail-in ballots by three days over pandemic-related concerns.
Flood 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.
Flood joined Lehigh Valley Republican lawmakers Zachary Mako (183rd) 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 in two judicial retention questions. Until the issue was resolved, 2,155 emergency paper ballots were used by voters, and some polling places ran out of emergency ballots.
Among the measures, the package would provide grants to counties to remediate administrative errors, require enough emergency paper ballots should a problem arrive and require counties to use voting machines that scan instead of mark paper ballots. The bills were referred to the House’s State Government Committee.
Women’s privacy
Flood sponsored several bills in the 2023-24 session that protect women. House Bill 2503 would strengthen repercussions for invasion of privacy. Flood proposed the bill after speaking with a woman who was recorded while using a restroom. The perpetrator was charged with a misdemeanor offense and was not required to delete the recording. Her bill, which was referred to the Judiciary Committee, would require such recordings to be deleted.
She sponsored House Bill 1960, which is now in committee, which would stop employers from using pre-employment, no-disclosure agreements to silence cases of sexual harassment or sexual assault in the workplace.
She also reintroduced what is now House Bill 1899. Now in committee, it would require rideshare drivers to post a bar code that users could scan to ensure they were entering the right vehicle. The bill is modeled after the South Carolina “Sami’s Law” which was a response to the death of Samantha Josephson in March 2019.
Guns
In 2021, Flood voted against allowing a procedural vote on House Bill 770, which would have banned owning, selling or making high-capacity, semi-automatic weapons. She voted yes on Senate Bill 565, which would have allowed anyone to conceal-carry a weapon without a background check or permit. It was vetoed by Wolf.
She voted yes to House Bill 979, which would have restricted municipalities from regulating firearms and allow aggrieved parties to sue municipalities. It was vetoed by Wolf.
In March, she 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.
Environment
Flood voted against House Bill 2241, which would create a stewardship program for the disposal of batteries. The bill passed the House in July and was sent to the Senate.
She voted against Senate Bill 831. Enacted into law in July, it creates guidance for and promotes “geologic storage” of carbon dioxide in underground reservoirs with guidelines more stringent than those required by the Environmental Protection Agency.
LGBTQIA+
In July, Flood voted for House Bill 2269, which changes the definition of marriage in the Commonwealth from a contract between a man and a woman to one between two individuals. The bill has passed the House and is now in the State Government committee of the Senate.
She supported House Bill 972, which sought to ban transgender girls from female sports teams in public schools, colleges and universities. It was vetoed by Wolf.
JARED BITTING
Background
Jared Bitting, 49, is a technology and engineering teacher at the Fleetwood Area School District. He graduated from Fleetwood Area High School and earned his bachelor’s and his master’s degrees in technology and education from Millersville University.
Bitting moved to Macungie more than 15 years ago and to Bushkill Township two years ago.
Bitting’s first wife, Rebecca, died from pancreatic cancer in 2021 after they had been married for 20 years.
He remarried in June. He and his wife Nicole each have a daughter, both of whom graduated from Nazareth Area High School.
Foray into politics
This is Bitting’s first run for office. According to his campaign website, he “comes from a family of public service.”
Bitting's father was a Reading city police officer. His mother is a retired nurse and his sister is currently a nurse. His stepmother served as a longtime school board member for Fleetwood Area School District.
Bitting has held many offices within his international and Pennsylvania educators’ associations and has been actively volunteering to develop and edit state required science testing for middle schoolers throughout the state.
ISSUES
Abortion/Women’s Health
Bitting believes in reproductive health care and the right to choose. “I, nor the government, cannot tell people what to do,” Bitting said in a recent interview.
Bitting said he knows from personal experience that restrictions on certain medical procedures can impact the physical and mental health of women. His late wife had a miscarriage that required a procedure that could now be restricted if abortion laws are changed.
Education
Bitting supports fair public education funding to prepare our students for the future, and in “keeping extremism and exclusion out of our schools and all books in our school and community libraries.”
In honor of his late wife, Bitting founded the Rebecca L. Bitting Memorial Library and STEM Center to help improve library and STEM opportunities at Allentown’s Raub Middle School, where his wife was a school librarian.
Bitting said urban and suburban districts approach education for science, technology, engineering and math differently and he would like to see all children have access to higher paying careers.
Bitting was happy to see an increase in state funding for public education this year, but he would like that trend to continue and alleviate the burden on local municipalities to fund the educational system.
The state is improving its approach to technology-related educational standards, but Bitting would like that to continue until all students are prepared for the “jobs of the future.”
Warehouses
Bitting would like to balance economic development with safeguards for the region’s natural beauty, wildlife and rural way of life. He opposes most construction of any new warehouses, unless the developers can design these new projects within the confines of the existing landscape.
“If an area is wooded, then any new construction should be done without leveling the entire site,” he said.
Developers also need to be responsible for the impact of these projects on communities, for example making improvements to infrastructure as needed.
When living in Macungie, he witnessed tractor-trailer accidents on a weekly basis where he said drivers relied on GPS instead of heeding signs that warned of jackknife risk.
Bitting cited the proposed River Pointe Logistics Center in Upper Mount Bethel Township as an example of a development that would have high impact.
The site covers about 1,500 acres where First Energy operated a coal-fired electrical plant.
Central sewerage might also be required for the site, which led Bitting to ask what that would cost and how that would impact current residents when they were forced to connect (and pay for) the sewerage system.
LGBTQIA+
Bitting said his daughter and step-daughter are members of the LGTBQIA+ community.
He said his family volunteered at this year’s Slate Belt Pride.
“Everyone’s decisions should be respected,” he said on the topic of gender and sexuality.
He supports marriage between any individuals based on “who you love.” He said that he has same-sex marriages in his family.
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