Pennsylvania Democrats scored historic wins in the Philadelphia suburbs in 2017, and they made history again there on Tuesday by taking control of the board of county commissioners in Bucks, Chester, Delaware, and Lehigh Counties.
The Philadelphia Inquirer writes that this is the first time that Democrats have won control of the Bucks County Board of Commissioners since 1983, while Team Blue hasn’t run the Delaware County Council (the equivalent of a county board) since the Civil War. The paper also adds that Democrats had never won the Chester County Board of Commissioners until Tuesday. The Morning Call also says this is the first time in decades that Democrats have taken the Lehigh County Board of Commissioners.
Democrats are counting on strong wins in the Philadelphia suburbs next year to take the state’s 20 electoral votes away from Donald Trump, and Tuesday’s results are a good omen. The Bucks County results in particular should also encourage Democrats looking to take down Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick: Bucks County makes up the vast majority of the 1st Congressional District, which is one of just three seats won by Hillary Clinton yet still represented by a Republican.
The news wasn’t uniformly good for Team Blue in the Keystone State, though, since the party lost control of several board of county commissioners in western Pennsylvania. However, state political analyst Ben Forstate writes that after Tuesday, over half of the state will live in a county controlled by Democrats.
Republicans also suffered a historic defeat in Philadelphia to the progressive Working Families Party, though not all Democrats are happy about it. The 17-member Philadelphia City Council contains seven citywide seats (the other 10 are single-member districts), but each party can nominate only five candidates. This has allowed Republicans to control at least two citywide seats since the city’s Home Rule Charter went into effect in the 1950s, but Working Families Party candidate Kendra Brooks cost Team Red one of those seats on Tuesday.
Brooks’ victory came despite efforts by Democratic City Committee Chairman Bob Brady, a former congressman who runs what was once a powerful city political machine. Brady argued before the election that Brooks could cost the five Democratic candidates support, and he suggested that any party committee members or ward leaders who supported a non-Democratic contender could be expelled from the committee. All five Democrats won, but Brady was still angry after Election Day.
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