Voting to save the city

Shortly after I turned 18 in December of 1979, I marched myself down to the local firehouse down the street in Llanerch, which was my polling place, and registered as a Democrat. In those days, nothing was done online, and it was a solemn moment when I signed the application and became a full member of civic society.

About 11 months later, I cast my first vote. It was for Ronald Reagan. Pretty much every vote thereafter was cast for Republicans, even though I managed to find some Democrats I liked, most notably the great Bob Casey Sr.

When I was in my early voting years, you had the sort of candidate running for office who was not an extreme representative of the most narrowly-defined, strictly adhered to standards of her particular party. There were moderates, there were 80 percenters (ones who reflected about 80% of their party platform) and there were even renegades who still clung to the party label for reasons known only to them. There were no RINO accusations, the idea that unless you were 100% in the tank for the party platform, you were a fraud.

In other words, I started voting in a world of nuance, and common sense.

That world is gone. And in some ways, I suppose, that’s not entirely a bad thing. Having clearly definably goal posts helps us decide who best reflects our values in a society where moral relativism is far worse than moral absolutes.

But sometimes, you have to go to war when the things that you hold dear are threatened, and that’s when a vote becomes the possibility for redemption. And in war, you need strategy. And in war, you need to play the long game.

That’s why I’m a Democrat again. In 2016, after 37 years hanging with the donkey, I threw him over for the elephant. Right before the Pennsylvania primary in April of that year, I changed my registration to Republican so I could vote for John Kasich.

I became an Independent in 2019. But Independents, ironically, are slaves to a system that doesn’t give them voices. In Pennsylvania, the party structures are so tight that unless you belong to a particular party, you are frozen out of the primaries.

So, this week, I went online and re-registered. As of 3:30 p.m. Monday, I am a Democrat. Again.

I only plan to stay a Democrat for two weeks. This is my wartime effort, my strategic move to strike a blow against a man who is doing profound damage to a city I now live in.

Larry Krasner cannot be reelected as the District Attorney of Philadelphia. Although I still have my home in Delaware County, I spend a good bit of time at my residence in Center City and have a lot invested in salvaging Philadelphia from the maelstrom of violence, bloodshed and blindness that has engulfed her since Krasner took office four years ago.

The man’s policies can be summed up in my suggested campaign slogan: “Empty the jails, Fill up the morgues.” The city has seen the highest homicide rate since statistics were recorded. Children — Black, brown and white — are dying in record numbers. Drugs and addiction have turned the streets into shooting galleries. Victims of crime are ignored, abused, ridiculed. And the assistant district attorneys hired by Krasner, a full third of whom failed the bar the first time around, are regularly castigated and sanctioned by the judges they appear before.

This has to stop. This cannot continue. The center will not hold.

And so, I registered as a Democrat to vote against Krasner in the May 18 primary. I hope that Carlos Vega, his challenger, will win. My vote, like the votes of thousands of other Republicans who changed their registration, might not have the impact of the millions of outside donations Krasner’s campaign is receiving from radical groups across the nation. My voice might not have the same weight as the money of some stranger, six degrees separated from George Soros.

But it’s what I can do to make the party system work for me. And the feeling of unease I had clicking on “Democrat” was balanced out by the sense of power I experienced in working to prevent Krasner from completely destroying a city I love.

My first vote as a Democrat was for a great man, who inspired America to greatness.

My last vote as a Democrat will be against another man, in a completely different class, whose idea of greatness is anathema to me.