Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
Democrats celebrate historic victory
The jolt of energy that Donald Trump’s presidential election victory last year delivered to members of the Chester County Democratic Party this year, as well as Republican miscues in Harrisburg and Washington, culminated in a stunning sweep of county row office races on Election Day.
“Donald Trump was on the ballot,” said Brian McGinnis, chairman of the county’s Democratic Committee. “Whether or not his name was there, he was on the ballot.
“We wanted to defeat Donald Trump’s agenda in Chester County, and we did that,” he said.
“It’s an unbelievable feeling to be a Democrat in Chester County and be part of history.”
Democrats won all four row office positions on Tuesday’s ballot, giving them the positions in the county courthouse and administrative offices they had long sought. By winning races for county clerk of courts, controller, coroner and treasurer, the party finally got a “seat at the table,” as one of the candidates had described her quest.
But equally as impressive were the gains Democrats made in individual municipal elections, the areas where the rubber meets the road in local government, said Democratic Commissioner Kathi Cozzone, until now the party’s only elected official at the county level.
“The Democrats came out and voted,” Cozzone said. “People are angry, not just about Donald Trump but also at Congress and the state (legislature). This is a message. Democrats wanted their voices heard.”
“History was made for Democrats in southeastern Pennsylvania,” state Democratic Party Chairman Marcel Groen declared. “Democrats in Chester County swept all four county row offices treasurer, controller, clerk of courts, and coroner and all four are women. This is, however, only the beginning. We have laid the groundwork for 2018 and we have many more great things to do.”
“This wasn’t just a spasmodic reaction,” said Jamie McVickar, a Democratic committee person in West Vincent, where a party candidate won a head-to-head match for supervisor for the first time in years. “This is the result of months and months of hard work and Democrats running for office in places where Democratic candidates had never run, all with a belief that we could make an impact.”
The election was also a watershed moment for the county’s Republican Committee, which had seen state and national Democratic candidates outpoll the GOP in recent years but had always been able to proclaim itself the last suburban Philadelphia county where Democrats had not made inroads at the top. Now, there are nearly equal party seats from both aisles in the county’s row offices, and several longtime Republican incumbents were cast out at the municipal level.
And it all started on Nov. 6, 2016, when Trump lost the county’s vote for president but won the state and the Electoral College. The Tuesday election results, said one county Republican politician, were “a repudiation of Trump by moderate Republicans coupled with historically high intensity by Democratic voters.”
“The easy answer is the Trump wave, the antiTrump wave,” said another Republican, who spoke with anonymity so as to directly confront the reasons behind the Democrats’ startling success. “Feelings are still very strong in southeastern Pennsylvania. The wave hit Bucks County, and Delaware County, and now the wave has come to Chester County, with a significant impact.”
The officials said that county Democrats seemed highly energized in the election. Trump’s victory, he said, “brought new individuals and new energy to them this year. There was shock, and now they are getting more active. There was a surge of Democratic activity I hadn’t seen before.”
GOP Chairman Val DiGiorgio, who splits time between heading the local and statewide party apparatus, said the election, “turned on things that happened outside of Chester County rather than inside Chester County. Obviously, we’re disappointed, but Democrats won in all four suburban Philadelphia counties. It’s a shame to lose good elected officials who worked hard to preserve the high quality of life we have in Chester County.”
Final results at the county level showed Democrats Patricia Maisano, Margaret Reif, Yolanda Van De Krol, and Dr. Christina Vandepol winning their races by an average of 7 percent. Two years prior, in 2015, Democrats running for county office lost their races by an average of 17 percent.
Maisano, running for treasurer, outpolled Republican Jack London 53,236 votes to 49,453. Controller candidate Reif bested incumbent Republican Norman MacQueen 57,455 votes to 47,824. Van De Krol, who entered the race in mid-summer, was victorious over Clerk of Courts Robin Marcello. And finally, coroner candidate Dr. Christina Vandepol won the race over incumbent Dr. Gordon Eck.
“We put so much hard work into this,” said Van De Krol, who was making her first run at countywide office. “It’s great that it turned out this way. Now, we’re ready to go.”
The sweep means that there will be nearly equal seats in the row office positions in 2018 between Democrats, with four, and Republicans, with five. Given that no Democrat has ever held any one of those seats before in the county’s 300-plus year history is an historic milestone of staggering proportions. The impact is real; for example, the Democrats now control the county’s Pension Board and its investment strategy and policies.
“I think the people realized that we have become more of a ‘blue’ area over the years, and they said, ‘We don’t think that’s fair,’“when looking at the “one-party” rule at the county and local level, said Van De Krol. “Now, we will be more transparent and communicate to constituents what’s going on in the county.”
The vote totals show that Democratic voters turned out in superior numbers to their GOP counterparts. Overall turnout was 31.7 percent, far below the 77 percent who voted in the 2016 presidential election, but significantly higher than the 2015 Municipal Election turnout of 26.7 percent. A full 26,717 county residents voted a straight Democratic ticket, almost 2,000 more than Republican party line ballots.
“That’s a complete flip,” from previous years, said Cozzone.
At the local level, Democrats won school board races in Downingtown, Avon Grove, TredyffrinEasttown, Great Valley, Kennett and Phoenixville. They won mayoral elections in West Chester (the county seat where the party’s candidate, Dianne Herrin, won 72 percent of the vote), Downingtown, Parkesburg, Oxford, and Phoenixville. They won supervisor races against longtime incumbents in townships like Uwchlan, West Goshen, and West Whiteland, and took never-before-held seats in Upper Uwchlan, East Goshen, East Marlborough and West Marlborough.
All vote totals are unofficial until certified by the county board of elections. Complete results can be viewed at www.chesco.org.