Both officials won as write-ins and were only asked to sign the pledge they are not a “subversive person” after their election.

Alan Kennedy-Shaffer, a political science senior at Yale University, was elected as minority inspector of elections for Upper Allen’s First Precinct in Cumberland County last November. He told the press he refused to sign the oath when asked December 6 because it was a “throwback” to the McCarthy years. After initially insisting he must sign the pledge to serve his term, on December 20 county officials told Kennedy-Shaffer they would not challenge him if he did not comply. “It sounds like a victory,” he said.

Gerald Massey, a retired university professor, was elected to the Stoneboro City Council in November. Mercer County officials then told him he could not serve his two-year term if he didn’t sign the “anti-subversive” pledge. Massey argued the law was voided in 1975 by then-state Attorney General Robert Kane. After public outcry, including articles favorable to the councilman-elect’s case in The Sentinel, a central Pennsylvania newspaper, Mercer county officials announced December 28 Massey could be sworn in without signing the loyalty oath.

The Socialist Workers Party candidate for mayor of Pittsburgh, Jay Ressler, had successfully challenged the same loyalty oath last July. Allegheny County officials accepted Ressler’s nominating petitions and placed him on the ballot after he crossed out the section requiring him to “swear… I am not a subversive person” as defined in the 1951 Pennsylvania Loyalty Act.

A letter by the SWP’s attorney to the board of elections at the time pointed out that the loyalty oath “is clearly unconstitutional under the [1974] decision of the United States Supreme Court in Communist Party of Indiana v. Whitcomb.” It continued, “In 1975, the State Attorney General issued a formal opinion stating that, on the basis of the Whitcomb case, the loyalty oath for State employees, which is identical to the Candidate’s Affidavit, is unconstitutional and should not be enforced.”

Brian McDonald, a spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Department of State in Harrisburg, told the Militant at the time that the Allegheny County’s decision did not necessarily set a precedent for other county or statewide offices. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” he said.  
 
 
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