Pa. GOP assigns overseer to reorganize Washington Co. Republican committee
Pa. GOP assigns overseer to reorganize Washington Co. Republican committee
The Republican Party of Pennsylvania is assigning an overseer to reorganize Washington County’s GOP committee after the local political organization had a mass exodus of officers while an acting chairman ran the group for nearly a year without electing a permanent leader.
The letter from state Republicans last week to the county committee announced that State Party Chairman Greg Rothman was intervening to install temporary leadership and vacate the acting chairman’s seat held by Steve Renz.
Mark Hrutkay was appointed chairman of the overseer committee, and he will be joined by Scott Day and Tony Bottino as they reorganize the local party’s leadership.
“It’s been a black eye for the party,” Hrutkay said. “It’s been quite frankly an embarrassment.”
Hrutkay served as chairman of the Washington County Republican Party’s committee from 2016 until 2020, when attorney Sean Logue took over as chair. Former county commission candidate Ashley Duff was elevated to the position in January 2025, but she resigned without explanation last August and was replaced on an interim basis by Renz.
“After Ashley left – she just sort of abruptly quit – there should’ve been an election after that and there wasn’t,” Hrutkay said in a phone interview. “That really shocked everybody.”
But no election was ever held to find a permanent leader for the committee, and most of the remaining elected officers resigned their positions, leaving the political group flailing with the power vacuum. The committee has sparred with the state GOP this year after holding a vote of no confidence against Republican state Sen. Camera Bartolotta, only for it to be overruled by Rothman, who is a fellow GOP senator from the Harrisburg area.
Hrutkay said his focus will be on holding a vote in the fall to elect permanent leadership for the committee and working to boost GOP registration in Washington County while also getting Republicans elected in the November general election. He said Republican voter registration numbers have flat-lined over the last year after exploding over the past decade to the point that the GOP now has a 20,000 registration advantage over Democrats in Washington County.
“The county Republicans deserve a functioning party that gets Republicans elected and continues to grow,” Hrutkay said. “When you lose focus on those two items, then this is what happens.”
Renz said he was “shocked” by the letter from the state party last week and that he was in the process of organizing an election for new officers, but was waiting for the finalized list of committee members from the May 19 primary election. He added that the “PAGOP’s actions are extraordinary” by vacating the acting chair and sending in an overseer committee to reorganize their local party.
“Unfortunately, this is only the latest in a series of divisive actions by the PAGOP over the past several months,” Renz said in an emailed statement.
He dismissed Rothman’s decision in vacating his position as acting chair, although it did not appear that he planned to challenge it or the state party’s authority over the Washington County Republican Party committee.
“That said, I have no intention of tying the WCRP up in a lengthy legal battle when a reorganization election was already expected to occur within weeks. … At this point, I am not willing to devote any more of my time or energy on the PAGOP until they elect leadership that acts ethically and actually follows the bylaws they so rarely cite,” Renz said.
Hrutkay acknowledged the unusual circumstances of the situation, but also noted that the state’s Democrats are undergoing a similar situation with their local committee in Lackawanna County.
“This is a unique thing that has happened. It’s rare that it happens and it shouldn’t have happened at all,” Hrutkay said. “I didn’t intend to be involved in this, but I was asked. I watched the party move in this direction the last (few) years since I’ve been gone. Why has the party gone in this direction? I don’t have an answer for that.”
Hrutkay is a South Strabane Township resident and currently chairs the county’s Local Share Account review committee.