Pgh Lesbian Correspondents

I had never heard of him.  I began following him on Twitter simply because he's a PA elected official. He's a somewhat frequent tweeter so he began catching my attention.  Here's his website.

Last night, he made a comment Speaker Pelosi that caught my attention:

So I retweeted questioning if this is the kind of thing a leader should tweet?  Really? I figured it was typical Republican Teabagging bull.

He responded.  Oh my God, I'm conversing with a Republican during HCR and no slurs are being exchanged! 🙂

So I looked him up.  He represents the 150th district which is Montgomery County — home of our friend and future Governor, Joe Hoeffel!  Yes, he's a Republican, but here's what his bio says …

As a state lawmaker, Mike will work to achieve true property tax reform for all Pennsylvanians. He also will work to preserve valuable open space and improve regional traffic planning. Finally, he will fight to reform the way government does business in Harrisburg.

 

Public service has long been a calling for Mike. He served as president of the West Norriton Board of Commissioners, where he worked hard to make government more responsive and accountable to the taxpayers by holding the line on taxes, preserving open space and supporting first responders.

 

He also served as a board member-at-large for the West Norriton Little League, a member of the Hancock Fire Company, a member of the Pastoral Council for Visitation BVM, a board member for Visitation BVM Children Youth Organization and an advisory board member for the Norristown Police Athletic League.

 

Mike also brings plenty of professional and real world experience with him to Harrisburg. He has 20 years of combined law enforcement and corporate security experience, including 10 years with the West Conshohocken Police Department, and corporate security work at both Comcast and Day and Zimmerman Security Services.

 

Mike and his wife are raising their family in West Norriton, where Mike has been a life long resident.

Note the lack of references to family values.  He's concerned about taxes, urban sprawl and reform.  If you follow him on Twitter, you'll see a lot of references to his own family so he's clearly a family man.  He just doesn't seem to think MY family has a negative impact on his family.

Then I learned this.

I was like “Shapiro's Discrimination” what?  So off I surfed to look this up.  Rep Josh Shapiro is also a tweeter. I found out that Shapiro introduced Hate Crimes legislation in 2009.  And sure enough I find that Rep Vereb voted “aye” for HB 745 which expanded hate crimes protections to the LGBT community when it was in the Judiciary Committee.  The legislation has been recommitted to Appropriations. 

I knew this legislation existed, but what a pleasant surprise that a Republican brought it up in conversation.

So that's pretty cool. He saw my screen name and took the time to connect with me.  In the midst of a real hatefest over #hcr, I had a nice little interlude with an elected official from across the aisle.