College Township Democrat Paul Takac has won election to the 82nd state House District, defeating State College Republican Justin Behrens for the open seat representing a swath of Centre County.
Takac, currently a College Township councilman, had 56% of the vote as of 1 a.m. on Wednesday with about 85% of precincts counted. He declared victory late Tuesday night.
“I will represent everyone in the district equally,” Takac said earlier in the night during an election party at Happy Valley Brewing Company. “I’ll never ask whether someone supported me or not. My job is to get to work for the people and communities that I represent and I will work with anyone in Harrisburg who’s willing to work on behalf of those issues and concerns, because there’s some real needs in our community. I will be honored and humbled to have the opportunity to work to address those.”
The new 82nd district — one of three that will represent Centre County in the state House — was drawn earlier this year through the statewide redistricting process and had no incumbent. It includes State College (partial), Howard, Milesburg, Snow Shoe and Unionville boroughs, and Benner, Boggs, Burnside, College, Curtin, Harris, Howard, Liberty, Marion, Snow Shoe and Union townships.
The race drew much interest from Republicans looking to maintain their hold on the General Assembly and Democrats seeking to flip control, or at least narrow the margin, resulting in big fundraising and a slew of television ads on both sides in the closing weeks.
“Honestly, from the very beginning this has been a people-powered campaign,” Takac said. “We have, I believe, over 10,000 individual contributions to this campaign. We had hundreds of volunteers that helped us the entire way. It’s about me, but it’s not about me. It’s about the people that came together to make sure that we had a fair representation in the new 82nd district.”
Takac has been a member of College Township Council since 2019 and chairs the Spring Creek Watershed Commission and Centre Region Council of Governments Public Safety Committee. He worked in education technology for three decades, shaping one of the passions that will be among his priorities in Harrisburg.
“My whole career has been in education so that’s a huge passion of mine,” he said. “I really believe we need to address the inequities in education statewide and here in the 82nd district. We need to implement the fair funding formula. We need to increase funding at all levels, both K-12 and higher education.
“At the same time there are some really urgent needs. There are rights, fundamental basic freedoms, that I believe are under attack that we need to right now address and protect. Reproductive rights, LGBTQ+ rights, voting rights — those are foundational to me.”
