Parks Miller attorney concedes DA race in federal court statement

When Bruce Castor stood in front of a panel of federal court judges on Monday, he was speaking for Centre County District Attorney Stacy Parks Miller.

He was there to argue the appeal of her ongoing lawsuit against a long list of local leaders and lawyers, including her opponent in the Democratic primary, Bernie Cantorna.

What he said included an apparent capitulation of the race.

“During the briefing, we referred to the appellee Bernard Cantorna as candidate Cantorna,” Castor said. “In fact, he was elected on both tickets in the primary ... and presumably will be elected as district attorney in November.”

That is something the Centre County elections office won’t yet concede.

According to the counts last week, Parks Miller lost the seat to Cantorna on the Democratic ticket by 30.41 percent, or 3,135 votes, to his 69.42 percent, or 7,156 votes.

On the Republican side, there was no challenger, but there were 4,568 write-in votes to count.

The elections office started to tabulate those on Friday. According to a representative in that office Monday, the process will take some time. There were four times more write-ins cast in the DA race than there were across all races in Centre County in the 2016 presidential election, and there were more write-ins for other races, such as State College mayor.

Tentative results provided by a county source show the 91 county precincts splitting even more sharply for Cantorna on the Republican side, with 2,672 votes to Parks Miller’s 608.

This story was originally published May 23, 2017 at 3:17 PM with the headline "Parks Miller attorney concedes DA race in federal court statement."