On Nov. 7, Lebanon County will elect the first female Court of Common Pleas judge in its 210-year history, but the race between Megan Ryland-Tanner and Donna Long-Brightbill has been subdued so far.
Attorneys Ryland-Tanner, 49, and Long-Brightbill, 62, are vying to fill the position on the county’s four-judge trial court vacated by Judge Samuel A. Kline, who retired on Sept. 30 and is now a part-time senior judge.
The winner will serve a 10-year term. The position pays $212,495 annually.
Both are registered Republicans. Ryland-Tanner, however, won the May 16 Democratic primary election, where candidates were allowed to cross-file and appear on both parties’ ballots, and will be on the Nov. 7 general election ballot as the Democratic candidate. Early voting by mail is already underway.
One reason for the quiet campaign may be Pennsylvania’s Code of Judicial Conduct, which largely bars candidates from engaging in political activities beyond their own campaigns and from making “pledges, promises, or commitments” about cases that may come before them.
They can, however, make campaign promises related to court management, such as promising to eliminate backlogs, and they can take action outside the courtroom, such as advocating for more money and personnel to run the courts.
Those limitations and the lack of any headline legal disputes or controversies before the local court seem to have limited the candidates to highlighting their respective qualifications.
Megan Ryland-Tanner
The North Cornwall Township resident has practiced law since 2001, and since 2021 she has been an associate with the Lebanon office of Lancaster-based law firm Barley Snyder, formerly known as Egli Reilly. Before that, she worked at Brandt & Gerber, a Palmyra law firm.
She served as a court-appointed child advocate – known as a guardian ad litem – in dependency court proceedings, and for nearly 20 years as a child custody conciliator and mediator, attempting to settle child custody disputes and make custody recommendations to judges.
Side-by-side with her private practice, she spent 15 years as a prosecutor in the Lebanon County District Attorney’s office, where she handled a wide variety of criminal cases including child sexual assaults and major felonies.
According to her web page, she has been endorsed by Bethel-based Pennsylvania Trooper Philip C. Melley Memorial Lodge #65 of the Fraternal Order of Police and by Firearm Owners Against Crime, a statewide organization.
Ryland-Tanner told LebTown that her campaign has concentrated on knocking on doors and holding “meet the candidate” events.
“I spent the last couple of months going door-to-door,” she said. “I go out on weekends, I go out evenings after work. That’s the way I think I can best get to the people and talk about who I am.”
Ryland-Tanner said she can’t point to any specific changes she would make to the county courts if elected, but said she would work to make the court system run more efficiently for the public as well as the bench and the bar.
Why should Lebanon County voters choose Ryland-Tanner to be their next judge?
“When I think about what makes me stand out from my opponent,” she told LebTown, “I look back at the last 22 years, and most of that has been spent in two areas, criminal and child custody matters. Those are the two biggest caseloads in our court.
“My criminal experience is more recent than my opponent’s, who was a prosecutor in the 1990s. And, since 2003, when I was appointed by the court to be a child custody conciliator, my appointment continued until January of this year, when I stepped down to run for judge.”
Read More: Megan Ryland Tanner is third candidate for Lebanon County judge seat
Donna Long-Brightbill
The West Cornwall Township resident has practiced law since 1988, first with a regional firm in Harrisburg, and the last 31 as a partner in Lebanon law firm Long Brightbill.
During that time, she has maintained a practice emphasizing family and municipal law.
On the family law side, she handles divorce, adoption, parental termination, child support and custody matters, along with dependency and child guardian cases.
Criminal and family law cases make up the bulk of the Lebanon County court’s caseload.
For seven years in the 1990s, she was a Lebanon County Assistant District Attorney, where she tried 75 criminal cases before juries, obtaining multiple felony convictions.
As a municipal lawyer, she serves as solicitor for the City of Lebanon, the Bethel and North Cornwall township zoning hearing boards, and the Lebanon County Housing and Redevelopment Authorities.
Long-Brightbill has been appointed by the Lebanon County Court as a chairman of civil arbitration panels, a special support master to make recommendations to judges, and to represent children in dependency and guardianship cases.
Like Ryland-Tanner, Long-Brightbill has been endorsed by the Bethel-based Pennsylvania Trooper Philip C. Melley Memorial Lodge #65 of the Fraternal Order of Police. (Lodge secretary Richard Freed told LebTown on Oct. 17 that his organization’s members consider both candidates qualified to be a county judge).
She also holds endorsements from Sheriff Jeff Marley and District Attorney Pier Hess Graf, and, like Ryland-Tanner, is endorsed by Firearm Owners Against Crime, according to its website.
According to Long-Brightbill, her campaign has so far consisted of going door-to-door, telephone outreach, meet-and-greet fundraising events, print advertising, and mailers. She is also running commercials on local radio station WLBR.
What changes would she like to see in the local court?
“I think that our judges do a very good job. We have a good judiciary.” She added that while they are parts of the same system, lawyers and judges necessarily have different roles, and that the system works best when each keeps the other’s requirements and obligations in mind.
Why should Lebanon County voters choose Long-Brightbill to be their next judge?
“Lebanon County voters should choose me over my opponent based upon my 34 years of experience, 31 of which have been in Lebanon County,” she told LebTown. “I have, by far, the greatest experience in the types of issues that come before our judges here in Lebanon County.”
In addition to her experience as a criminal prosecutor, she said, “for 31 years I’ve had a very full and extensive private practice that primarily has focused on family law and municipal law. If you look at the [daily] court calendar … I am on it constantly.”
Long-Brightbill’s husband, David “Chip” Brighbill, served in Pennsylvania’s State Senate for 23 years. Her brother, Michael Long, is a principal in the Harrisburg lobbying firm, Long-Nyquist.
Read More: Republican attorney Donna Long Brightbill runs for Lebanon County judge
Campaign financing
Candidates and their committees are required to periodically report contributions and expenses to the state throughout a campaign. Those reports are available to the public on a Pennsylvania Department of State website.
According to that website, Ryland-Tanner’s committee has filed reports due through Oct. 27. Long-Brightbill’s committee’s filed its final pre-election report on Oct. 27, according to the candidate. That report had not been posted to the DOS website as of 12:15 p.m. on Oct 31, likely due to a DOS updating delay.
Ryland-Tanner
Through Oct. 27, Ryland-Tanner’s campaign committee reported cash receipts of $47,825.17 and “in-kind” contributions — donations of good and services — of $10,112.80. Its expenses totaled $25,658.28.
Her committee received cash contributions from over four dozen individuals, ranging from under $50 to a $5,000 contribution from Linda Lebo-Edris, the candidate’s mother. It received in-kind contributions from multiple donors, ranging from $5.02 to $2,978.70 from Kevin Long for “Hebron Catering and Events.”
The Ryland-Tanner committee’s largest reported expenditure was to Staples, $3,467.31 for printing.
Long-Brightbill
Through Oct. 27, Long-Brightbill reported that she had personally contributed $88,000 to her campaign committee. Reported monetary contributions to her committee through Oct. 27 totaled $146,170.70, and in-kind contributions received totaled $28,895.70.
Total reported expenditures of her committee through Oct. 27 were $98,812.36, including contributions to the Lebanon County Republican Committee totaling $60,000.
While the Long-Brightbill campaign committee appeared to have plenty of cash on hand, it didn’t directly pay a $28,895.70 bill for campaign literature and postage. Instead, reports filed suggest that a part of its contributions to the Lebanon County Republican Committee was passed on to the Republican Party of Pennsylvania (RPA), which paid the bill. Doing it that way resulted in an in-kind contribution by the RPA of $28,895.70 back to Long-Brightbill’s committee.
Although Long-Brightbill did not respond directly to questions asking why the money was apparently passed through the state committee, noting only that she had fully complied with the law, such a practice has been used before in local races, including in this spring’s county commissioner primary.
Read More: A look at the future of the Lebanon County Court of Common Pleas
UPDATE: This article was updated at 1:25 p.m. on Oct. 31 to reflect an Oct.27 campaign finance report filed by Long-Brightbill’s campaign committee.
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