I enjoyed reading this about Delaware County in the Philadelphia suburbs very much:
Democrats had just obliterated Republican control of three Philadelphia-area suburban counties late Tuesday night in a stunning rebuke of President Donald Trump when, amid a deafening celebration in Swarthmore, I pulled aside the chairwoman of the party whose incensed liberals had just toppled one of the most formidable GOP machines in the United States.
This was an incredible scene: Colleen Guiney’s infantry of newcomers to the political system had just seized every County Council seat, the post of district attorney, and a full slate of judgeships in Delaware County. They left not even a crumb for the GOP, annihilating Republicans with the brutal finality of a nuclear bomb. And this in a county where, for generations, you had to at least pretend you were Republican if you wanted to get anything done.
And this about Chester County:
Since 1861, with the election of West Chester resident Thomas Bateman, there have been 59 Republicans elected to serve as Chester County commissioner. Time was, there was no surer bet in Pennsylvania politics than that a Republican team of commissioners would be elected to run the county courthouse and government.
Observers said in the heady years of Ronald Reagan’s presidency, half of all registered Republicans could drop dead the day before the November election and the party would still run the table.
On Tuesday, county Democrats scored a perfect 9-for-9 in a sweep of countywide elections, from county commissioners, to District Attorney and Sheriff, to Common Pleas judge, and down to Prothonotary, Recorder of Deeds, and Register of Wills.
“When the votes started rolling in, they just kept rolling in,” said Patrick O’Donnell, the once-elected, once appointed Democratic commissioner whose political career in the county spans 50 years.
Thoughts that the Democrats might pick up an office or two in the courthouse as the Republicans reasserted their dominance in county politics quickly turned to shock ands awe as the candidates forced early leads that kept up through the night, ending with a resounding roar of a blue wave crashing on the county’s figurative shore.
And this about Bucks County:
DOYLESTOWN >> For the first time in 40 years, Bucks County voters on Tuesday flipped control of county government to the Democrats.
After years of Republican control, Democrats swept to victory on Tuesday winning four open county row offices and majority control of the board of county commissioners.
Incumbent Democrat Commissioner Diane Ellis-Marseglia and Falls Township Supervisor Robert Harvie won majority control of the Bucks County Board of County Commissioners by unseating incumbent Republican Commissioner Rob Loughery…
…Democrats also swept every row office race, with Newtown Township Supervisor Linda Bobrin defeating Republican incumbent Don Petrille for Register of Wills. Bobrin had 51.5 percent of the vote.
Democrat Kris Ballerini defeated Republican incumbent Tom Panzer for the job of county treasurer with 51.4 percent of the vote.
Democrat Brian Munroe defeated longtime Republican Clerk of Courts Mary Smithson with 51 percent of the vote.
And Democrat Meredith Buck defeated incumbent Republican Coronor Joseph Campbell with 51.1 percent of the vote.
Following Tuesday’s vote, the Democrats now hold every row office except for district attorney.
Why did the GOP just get reduced down post-apocalyptic cockroaches in their old strongholds?
For O’Donnell, who served as commissioner from 1980 until 1984, and again from 2006 to 2008, Tuesday’s results were something “I dreamed for, I prayed for.” But he said he firmly believes the voter registration trend that has seen Democrats poised to gain a plurality of Republicans made it only a matter of time before the party captured the courthouse.
“We probably would have gotten here in the next six to 10 years, but (President Donald J. Trump) just speeded that up.
“This happened because of Trump,” O’Donnell declared Wednesday. “He is such a disgusting president, and everyone in Chester County thinks so.”
For this Chester County resident, I certainly concur, and I am relieved to see that it is the consensus view in these parts.
That was meeee! DelCo FTW
“This happened because of Trump,” O’Donnell declared Wednesday. “He is such a disgusting president, and everyone in Chester County thinks so.”
I am happy that there really are people out in the world who see this President and are moved by his disgusting existence to turn away from all those candidates who are even remotely affiliated with his Party. Sadly, I live in a place where the opposite seems to be true. The more awful he is, the more the people here seem to embrace him. I am so weary of it all.
Honestly, with a kid in fourth grade, I don’t think I could support Trump without getting his disinvited to play-dates and birthday parties. People don’t see support for Trump as sociable acceptable.
I covered some rural polling places for the Board of Elections on Tuesday, and I passed a couple of homes that had freshly hung Trump-MAGA flags flying on their flagpoles, just under the U.S. flag. And saw a few Trump-Pence 2020 yard signs already out. It could turn out to be a brutal slog around here for the next year. But hey, no new death threats to local Dem Party officers in the last month, so I guess that’s progress, right?
“MAGA flags”
Do they have armbands and a party symbol yet?
I don’t know about the Philly suburbs, but the power—even the mere existence—of suburban (and rural) Republican party machines is a severely under-reported and under-discussed political reality.
For decades the most powerful county “machine” in NY politics was not the Democratic machine in Brooklyn or Queens, but the Republican machine in neighboring Nassau County. (Suffolk County ran a close second.) Teenagers getting hired for a summer lifeguarding job at a public pool had to have the backing of someone in the party (and more often, contributions to the party from an older relative or other sponsor). The Nassau County machine’s control affected everything from courthouse jobs (chief judge to night janitor) to public works contractors (don’t bother bidding if you hadn’t already settled accounts at party headquarters in Hempstead).
A similar story existed in southern California. It wasn’t the LA County Democratic party that most reliably ran like a well-oiled machine, delivering jobs, contracts, and favors in exchange for money and votes; it was the Orange County Republican party.
Oldtimers talk about the Cook County machine stealing enough votes to swing Illinois to Kennedy in 1960. They talk less frequently about the downstate Republican machine that was stealing votes for Nixon. (Daley’s crime wasn’t that he held back the election returns to steal votes; it was—in the eyes of Illinois Republicans—that (in that case at least) he did it more effectively than they did.)
Point being: once longstanding county political machines lose power, it’s very, very hard for them to win it back because they no longer control the currency (jobs, contracts, favors) on which they had relied.
Don’t urban and suburban municipalities represent like 2/3 of most states’ voters? If Repubs are being annihilated in these geographies then it is difficult to see how they will retain power in any Purple state like PA. Even the greatest computerized gerrymandering has its limits.
As for Red States. for all the supposed dislike of a “conservative” imbecile like Bevins, he only lost by 5,000 votes (and probably will retain office through Repub election rigging), so for an enormous chunk of Red Staters, even an incompetent imbecile “conservative” is preferable to a sane Dem.