Karen Heller: Republicans' trouble in Montgomery County is bad - for party's creditors

What a glorious time to be Republican!

Speaker John Boehner and his party assume control of the U.S. House of Representatives Wednesday, welcoming Pennsylvania's five GOP freshmen, while Pat Toomey replaces political mood ring Arlen Specter in the Senate.

In two weeks, Republicans will storm Harrisburg, taking control of the governor's mansion and both chambers of the legislature.

But in Montgomery County, one of Pennsylvania's wealthiest counties and once a Republican stronghold for both blue bloods and the blue collar, how's the party faring?

Not so grandly.

The Montgomery County Republican Committee is troubled with more than $91,000 in debts to vendors (some in arrears for more than two years), a nigh-onto-nuclear relationship between its two county commissioners, and concerns of increasing reliance on one donor, lawyer and businessman Vahan Gureghian, the committee's finance chair.

Committee chair Robert Kerns, a convivial optimist, expresses few worries.

"We've raised over $1.5 million in two years and used that to fund campaigns," Kerns says. "My job is to get people elected. I've tried to do that. It's just that simple. I'll always have debt." As for the creditors, "they will get paid. Every one of those bills will get paid."

Try telling that to Presidential Catering's Gus Mandracchia, owner of the East Norriton banquet hall that was the long-standing venue for the committee's biannual receptions. He's still owed $6,250 from 2008.

"In 45 years of business, I can't remember this happening," Mandracchia says. "I never had a situation where I did not get paid." He says, "I've gotten lots of promises from the committee," the last dated July 1, 2009. The check still hasn't arrived.

In the past, the county Republican organization attracted large and small business folks championing fiscal conservatism. "Everybody was a Republican," says lawyer Stephen Britt, a veteran member of the since-disbanded Chairman's Club, which met every first Friday at the Blue Bell Tavern to quaff and chat.

"It was like Tammany Hall, but clean. Meritorious people would apply for positions and dutifully wait their turn. It was a well-oiled machine," says Britt, who worries about the committee's current condition. "They were the only game in town, and the thought that they wouldn't pay their bills - holy moley!"