Arnold Schwarzenegger was a write-in for U.S. senator, and John Wayne claimed a vote for president.

But after days of sifting through write-in votes, election officials said two real Democratic candidates gained enough to challenge Republican incumbents on the ballot in November.

Mike Strausbaugh will face off against Rep. Will Tallman, R-Reading Township, in the 193rd House District, and Bruce Neylon will oppose Sen. Richard Alloway II, R-Franklin County, in the 33rd Senate District.

Both districts include parts of York County. Senate candidates need at least 500 votes to get on the ballot, while 300 votes are needed for House seats.

33rd Senate: Neylon, a 59-year-old computer programmer from

Straban Township, joined the race just a few days before the primary election to stop Republicans, who were trying to claim both the GOP and the Democratic slots on the ballot, he said.

"We wouldn't have had a choice," he said. "My wife and I got letters from Alloway and (Republican challenger Jim Taylor) asking us as Democrats to vote for them on the Democratic side, and that kind of hurt us. I just thought that should be our slot. Taylor already had his chance to beat Alloway on the Republican side."

On the Friday night before Tuesday's primary, he ran into an Adams County Democratic party leader at the grocery

store and his campaign was born.

If elected in November, Neylon said he would focus his term on education, the environment and health care.

The candidate wants to restore funding to education and stop state tax breaks for large corporations. Companies drilling in the Marcellus Shale were given "a free pass" while students suffer and some Pennsylvanians have no health insurance, he said.

Neylon would consider creating a universal single-payer health care system for Pennsylvania residents, he said.

193rd House: Strausbaugh is a 38-year-old from Hamilton Township in Adams County who works as a machine operator at SKF USA in Hanover.

He ran in 2010, and "decided that it wasn't something I was going to run and give up," he said.

Strausbaugh's priority would be abolishing school property taxes and shifting the burden of funding education to the state sales tax, he said.

If elected, he said he will eliminate automatic pay raises for legislators and increase education funding.

"The state could have decreased their cuts in education through a tax on Marcellus Shale but I feel they chose the gas industry over a child's education," he said.

Strausbaugh said he would support a larger tax on natural gas drillers, as well as increased regulations and environmental studies to make sure companies aren't harming the state's resources.

-- Reach Christina Kauffman at 505-5436, ckauffman@yorkdispatch.com, or follow her on Twitter at @YDYorkCounty.