UPDATED: Conklin ‘Could Use The Bump In Pay,’ Saidel Camp Says

Updated @ 2 p.m. Wednesday: Conklin aide clarifies his position, says the lawmaker would resign his state House seat if he becomes lieutenant governor. Read the latest story from StateCollege.com right here.

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Updated @ 11:30 p.m. Monday: Saidel’s communications director responds. Details below.

Scott Conklin is prepared to serve in two elected positions — state representative and lieutenant governor — if he wins both jobs this year, he said Monday.

State Rep. Conklin, D-Rush Township, is running for the Democratic nominations in both the lieutenant-governor race and the state House race for the 77th District. He has no opposition in the latter primary contest, where is the two-term incumbent.

And in the lieutenant-governor primary race, Conklin said, internal polling data show that he is has been running slightly ahead of — or neck and neck with — former Philadelphia city Controller Jonathan Saidel.

Democratic voters will decide both nominating contests Tuesday at the ballot box. Conklin said his background as a rural Pennsylvanian is helping him in the election cycle.

‘Folks want a balanced ticket,’ he said in a press conference in State College. ‘They want someone with some rural values. … By being from central Pennsylvania, I don’t have that (political) machine’ backing me up.

Elected officials in the state are allowed to hold House and lieutenant-governor seats simultaneously. Two recent lieutenant governors, Robert Jubelirer and Joseph Scarnati III, have done double duty as legislators. But neither campaigned for the job; both were only senators when unforeseen circumstances propelled them into the executive branch.

Scarnati, the current lieutenant governor, ascended to the job after the 2008 death of the late Lieutenant Gov. Catherine Baker Knoll. Jubelirer took the position after the 2001 promotion of former Lieutenant Gov. Mark Schweiker to the governor’s office.

If Conklin is elected as both lieutenant governor and state representative, he will give up his committee seats in the House, he said. He said he would accept only one salary: the lieutenant-governor salary, at roughly $143,000 a year. (The state-representative salary is closer to $70,000 a year.)

Also at the press conference Monday, Conklin reiterated his campaign pledges to fight no-bid contracts and pay-to-play trends in Harrisburg. He estimated those two practices siphon as much as $1 billion a year from the state budget.

Reached by e-mail Monday evening, Saidel’s communications director, Marty Marks, wrote that ‘it is too bad (Conklin) is not going to win.

‘Sounds like he could use the bump in pay to hire a new pollster,’ Marks wrote, casting doubt on the polling data that Conklin cited. ‘If he had said this stuff earlier, he would have been laughed off the ballot.’

StateCollege.com will have complete local primary-election results late Tuesday and Wednesday.