State College District Judge Jonathan Grine won both the Republican and Democratic nominations Tuesday for the seat that will be vacated next year by his father — President Judge David. E. Grine — on the Centre County bench.
According to preliminary election results, Grine won 59.99 percent of the primary vote among Democrats (4,628 votes) and 53.95 percent of the primary vote among Republicans (5,453 votes). A Democrat, Grine had cross-filed to appear on both parties’ primary ballots.
So did his rivals, fellow Democrat Stephanie Cooper, of Bellefonte, and Republican David Mason, of Philipsburg.
StateCollege.com spoke with Grine after Mason called him to concede late Tuesday night. Grine said that his campaign appealed to voters with its judicial and nonpolitical message.
If he wins in the general election this fall, Grine said, his top priorities will continue to be the issues ‘that we’ve been talking about through the whole campaign — mental-health and domestic-violence issues, and how the court handles them.’
‘I also want to integrate technology into the court to make it more cost effective,’ he said.
Among the other primary candidates, Cooper received 1,940 votes from Democrats (25.15 percent of the Democratic vote) and 1,227 votes from Republicans (12.14 percent of the Republican vote), according to initial vote tallies.
Mason received 1,141 votes from Democrats (14.79 percent of the Democratic vote) and 3,424 votes from Republicans (33.88 percent of the Republican vote), the initial counts show.
Grine, a district judge in State College for the past eight years, previously ran for county common-pleas judge in 2007. He won the Republican nomination that year but lost in the general election to Pamela Ruest, who become the county’s first female common-pleas judge.
Heredity may have been a factor in this second bid. The open judicial seat became available with the announced retirement of Grine’s father, who has served three decades on the bench.
‘I want to thank both Dave Mason and Stephanie Cooper and all their friends and family and supporters for supporting this election,’ said Grine. ‘I thought they all ran very solid campaigns.’
Grine, born in 1973, graduated from Bellefonte High School, Penn State and the Penn State Dickinson School of Law.
Cooper, 45, was born in Lancaster, but her family moved to the Hershey area when she was an infant. She graduated from Hershey High School, Penn State and the University of Pittsburgh School of Law and began practicing law with Miller, Kistler and Campbell in Bellefonte before opening her own law office there.
Mason, 52, is a graduate of Philipsburg-Osceola High School, Lycoming College and the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. He is a former Centre County assistant district attorney.
After serving a 10-year term, judges are eligible to run for reelection against an opponent, or for retention in a nonpartisan, yes-or-no referendum.
Rich Kerstetter, of StateCollege.com, and Davis Shaver, of OnwardState.com, contributed to this report.
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