Democrats in Pennsylvania’s third-largest county appear to be on track for a seriously contested May primary for the Montgomery County Board of Commissioners following a Thursday convention where delegates refused to follow the lead of party leaders. While the committee members endorsed newly-appointed Commissioner Jamila Winder at the nearly 500-person gathering, they refused to give the thumbs up to state Rep. Tim Briggs’ campaign to be her running mate.
All three Commission seats are elected countywide, and voters in November can select up to two candidates. However, each party can only nominate two candidates this May, so the body will wind up with a 2-1 split even though Democrats have a strong advantage in this suburban Philadelphia community. Winder became the first Black woman to serve on the body weeks ago after the Montgomery County Court of Common Pleas appointed her to succeed Val Arkoosh, who resigned to join Gov. Josh Shapiro's administration, while fellow Democratic Commissioner Ken Lawrence is retiring. The third seat is held by Republican Joe Gale, who is seeking re-election.
The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Andrew Seidman published an article days before the Democratic convention saying that the party had originally told legislative aide Danielle Duckett she would be appointed to fill Arkoosh’s seat, a decision that would have made her the first Black woman to hold this post. The appointment was reportedly rescinded, though, and Duckett’s allies quickly blamed the local Democratic Party’s leaders: Seidman says that, while the local Court of Common Pleas officially makes appointment decisions, “[I]n practice, the court takes the recommendation of the party that held the seat.”
The story says that, after initially offering the seat to Duckett, party leaders learned that she’d filed for bankruptcy two decades ago as she dealt with thyroid cancer. Duckett’s supporters, meanwhile, argue that she was derailed in part because of the powerful Philadelphia Building & Construction Trades Council’s tensions with her boss, state Rep. Chris Rabb.
One committee person reportedly told Duckett they’d heard she wasn’t a “team player,” and they weren’t appeased when she pushed back on that characterization. Seidman writes, “Allies of Duckett who have heard her account of the meeting say they interpreted this line of questioning as suggesting that party leaders were disappointed she had not used her authority in the township to hire politically connected firms.” State Sen. Katie Muth expressed her frustration that Duckett was rejected for the commission, arguing it happened “because basically there’s concerns you’re not going to march to the beat of the drum of the status quo machine Dems in Montco.”
Seidman says that, while plenty of displeased Democrats don’t blame Winder for what happened, they weren’t eager to fall into line and support Briggs. Those tensions played out during Thursday’s convention when one local party committee member told the assembly, “We are not a rubber stamp and we have an opportunity to not be a rubber stamp,” while another decried how Duckett was “shafted in public.”
Still others argued that a Briggs win would give the GOP a chance to flip his state House seat in a special election, or at least take advantage of his absence in a chamber where Democrats now have a one-seat edge. While Briggs’ supporters argued the party had no reason to be concerned about his 149th House District, which favored Biden 70-29, they weren’t able to stop a majority of committee members from voting to issue “no endorsement” rather than back him. By contrast, Winder won the more than 60% of the committee members she needed to secure the party endorsement.
The only Democrats who have announced so far are Winder, Briggs, and attorney Neil Makhija, while Duckett hasn’t said if she’ll run yet. The field will take shape soon, though, as March 7 is the deadline to submit signatures to appear on the May primary ballot.