In 2019, the Blair County Taxpayers' Alliance (BCTA) membership was infuriated with their existing county commissioners, who, in 2016, had allowed a predatory company with a spotty performance record to conduct — and botch — the first county-wide property tax re-assessment in 58 years. Thousands of Blair County homeowners had faced absurd, speculative assessments resulting in massive tax increases. The appeals process set up and managed by the assessment company was a sham, meaning only those people with the resources to open a court case were able obtain relief. Worse, the existing County Commissioners continued to parrot the deceptive narratives purveyed by that company, which had somehow wormed its way directly into the heart of county government, and still had an open-ended multi-million dollar software contract no one in government could adequately justify.

In 2016, when the Alliance sued the County in an unsuccessful effort to stop the reassessment from being certified, the County lawyer said: "These people don't have legal problem, they have a political problem. They should approach the electorate for relief, not a courtroom."

It wasn't true — the due process rights of County taxpayers had clearly been violated — but the Alliance nonetheless took the advice to heart. It was time to elect a taxpayer-friendly commissioner.

Enter Amy Webster, a local attorney and Alliance member who had helped other members with their property tax appeals. Webster was friendly, soft-spoken and a cultural conservative of the sort most BCTA members felt comfortable with. The BCTA also considered supporting Bruce Kelley, who had impressed the Alliance with his grasp of the issues, and had once worked in the office of the powerful former State Senator Robert Jubilirer. But in the end, the Alliance Board voted 5-2 to support Webster. She wasn't a career politician, she was promising concrete action , and she was indeed a very nice person. We knew she meant well.

It was the wrong choice. Once elected, the establishment attacked her like jackals, and she simply lacked the wherewithal to fight back. She spent the first two years in a fruitless struggle to win the respect of her new colleagues, often tiring, and forgetting the promises she made to the people who actually elected her. In hindsight, Webster's failures and betrayals are unsurprising. She's a nice person, but a bad commissioner. Re-electing her would be a huge mistake.