Billy O'Gurek Jr.,Summit Hill, has announced his candidacy for re-election to the Summit Hill Borough Council. He is seeking the Democratic nomination in the May 16 primary.

O'Gurek has served on the council for 4½ years, having initially been appointed to the board in 2013 and then elected to a four-year term that November.Currently, he is chairman of the council's police committee, serves on the personnel committee, and is the borough's representative on the Carbon County Council of Governments, where heserves as vice president.O'Gurek is a graduate of Marian High Schooland earned a Bachelor of Science degree in political science from King's College, Wilkes-Barre.He interned in the Wilkes-Barre office of former U.S. Rep. Paul Kanjorski and started his career in politics by working on the campaigns of Kanjorski, Gov. Ed Rendell and Sen. Robert Casey while a student in Luzerne County.In 2010, O'Gurek was elected chairman of the Carbon County Democratic Executive Committee, a position he continues to hold.While also directing the Democratic Party's operations in his home county, he serves on the Pennsylvania State Democratic Committee and, in 2014, was elected chairman of the state committee's Northeast Delegation, which includes the counties of Schuylkill, Monroe, Luzerne, Lackawanna, Northampton, Pike, Wyoming, Wayne, Bradford and Susquehanna.In 2012, O'Gurek was elected as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, for Pennsylvania's 17th Congressional District.He has long been active within the community, volunteering as an umpire and coach in the Summit Hill/Anthracite Little League; being a member and past president of the Panther Valley Irish-American Association; and as an assistant football coach at Marian High School.O'Gurek is a member of the Bo Tkach Foundation, the regional nonprofit board established to create an awareness of mental health issues while providing essential funding for youth athletic programs, scholarships and otherwise inaccessible individual mental health screening and treatment.He is a member of St. Joseph Catholic Church of the Panther Valley, Summit Hill, where is a lector and Eucharistic minister.He is a son of William and Siobhan O'Gurek of Summit Hill.