Michael Bagdes- Canning

For the first time in Butler County history, voters will get a chance in November to vote for a countywide third-party candidate.

Michael Bagdes-Canning of Cherry Valley is running for county commissioner as a Green Party candidate.

Bagdes-Canning earlier this month submitted 459 nominating signatures to the county bureau of elections, which was more than enough for him to appear on the ballot for the Nov. 3 election.

To be on the ballot as a third-party candidate, candidates have to get 2 percent of the total votes from the highest vote-getter in the last countywide election cycle. In Bagdes-Canning’s case, he had to get 409 signatures.

Shari Brewer, director of elections, said the election bureau had to go back to the 2013 election to get that number. The candidate with the highest vote total that year was Coroner William Young III with 20,450 votes.

Bagdes-Canning will appear on the ballot along with Republicans Leslie Osche and Kim Geyer and Democrats Jerry Johnston and Kevin Boozel. Each voter can vote for two candidates. The top three vote-getters will become commissioners.

Regis Young, longtime former director of elections, said he cannot recall any other cases of a third-party candidate appearing on the ballot for county office.

“As long as I remember, no,” said Young, who was director of elections from 1988 to 2010.

Bagdes-Canning said he chose to run as a Green candidate because the two-party system is broken, with both Democrats and Republicans being “dysfunctional.”

“We are a representative democracy. We elect people to represent our interests. For too long we’ve allowed our government to run roughshod over the will of the people,” Bagdes-Canning said in a statement.

Bagdes-Canning has been on the Cherry Valley council for 26 years and is the vice president. He was a teacher for 36 years, retiring in 2012 after teaching at George Junior Republic in Grove City for 29 years.

Today, he is a community organizer and planning group member with Marcellus Outreach Butler.

He said he wants to have a county government that better serves residents, and said he would plan to spend time in every municipality.

“County government should be reactive to the needs of county residents,” Bagdes-Canning said in his statement.

One of the big issues he wants to tackle is how Act 13 impact fees on gas wells have been and are being used in the county, saying that residents in the Woodlands in Connoquenessing Township have had water issues allegedly related to drilling for four years and they have not gotten any impact fee money.

“Impact fees were included in the act to pay for impacts of oil and gas drilling,” Bagdes-Canning said.

He also would like to get the Butler County Community College tuition to be free or low for qualified county residents.

“We need to invest in our young people and the residents of the county,” Bagdes-Canning said.

Bagdes-Canning and his wife, Karen, have four children and four grandchildren.

The Green Party is “committed to environmentalism, nonviolence, social justice and grassroots organizing,” according to its website.