Delco GOP coming to grips with reality of blue tsunami
No wonder Andy Reilly is feeling “blue.”
Everywhere he looks, that’s what the chairman of the Delaware County Republican Party sees.
Blue as in Democrats winning race after race in Delaware County elections, leaving the once all-powerful Delco GOP red-faced.
What was once a solidly red county is quickly going true blue.
Don’t believe it? Just take a gander at the carnage endured by the
Delco GOP at the polls in the recent midterm elections. This is no longer a novelty - Dems winning elections in Delaware County. It’s now a blue wave. And the local GOP is drowning in it.
Incumbent Republican state Sen. Tom McGarrigle? Gone. He lost his 26th District seat to Democratic challenger Tim Kearney, mayor of Swarthmore.
It was a brutal day for Springfield, once one of the bastion’s of GOP power in the county.
Incumbent state Rep. Alex Charlton? Ousted. He lost to novice Democrat challenger Jenn O’Mara in the 165th race.
It wasn’t just Springfield. Next door in Upper Darby, Democrats continued to flex their newfound muscle. State Rep. Jamie Santora, R-163, a popular incumbent, was shown the door, falling to newcomer Mike Zabel.
Consider just those three seats in the Delco delegation in Harrisburg – the 163rd, 164th and 165th.
There was a time when those seats formed a troika of GOP power, accompanied by some heavyweight names in Delaware County politics.
Nick Micozzie, Mario Civera and Bill Adolph.
Each held their seat for three decades. That’s about 15 elections for two-year terms in the state House. Each rolled to victory after victory, powered by the GOP’s overwhelming ground game and solid voter registration edge.
All three of those seats are now held by Democrats.
Incredibly, the Delco delegation in Harrisburg, once solidly Republican, has now dwindled to just two.
State Rep. Nick Miccarelli,
R-162, did not seek re-election after being accused by two women of inappropriate sexual behavior, a charge he emphatically denied.
The GOP smartly found a woman to run for the seat, and one with solid name recognition to boot. Mary Hopper was the former county sheriff. Didn’t matter. She lost to Democratic labor leader Dave Delloso.
The only two Republican winners in state House races were longtime incumbent Rep. Steve Barrar, R-160, and Rep. Chris Quinn, R-168. Barrar’s margin in his district, which includes parts of southern Chester County, is getting slimmer. Ironically, Quinn’s was the seat most people looked at as being most in jeopardy as he faced intense pressure from opponents of Sunoco’s Mariner East 2 pipeline. Instead, Quinn managed to eke out a win over Rose Tree Media School Board member Kristine Seale to earn another two years in Harrisburg.
It wasn’t just the state House and Senate races where local Republicans were licking their wounds.
They basically waved a white – or is that blue? – flag in the
5th District race for Congress as well.
This is the seat where U.S. Rep. Pat Meehan rolled to a series of blowout wins, routinely racking up 60 percent of the vote.
Then a couple of things happened. Meehan got caught up in a scandal involving the use of taxpayer money to settle a sexual harassment suit filed by a former staffer. Eventually he resigned his 7th District seat. Then the state Supreme Court blew up the 7th – calling it a classic case of partisan gerrymandering. They replaced “Goofy Kicking Donald Duck,” as the 7th was mockingly referred to, with the newly formed
5th. The entire county was put back under one Congressional roof, along with a sliver of Montgomery County on the Main Line and a portion of south and southwest Philadelphia.
Republicans cried foul, saying the court had overstepped its bounds in usurping the job of the Legislature in drawing up congressional districts. They lost that fight in court. Then lost big time at the polls.
The GOP nominated a woman in their attempts to ease the #MeToo backlash after the Meehan fiasco. It didn’t help. Pearl Kim got trounced by Democrat Mary Gay Scanlon, who won both the special election in the
7th, as well as the new 5th seat. She was sworn in as the newest member of Congress this week, part of a wave being referred to as the Year of the Woman. Three other women – all Democrats – won seats in Congress from Southeastern Pennsylvania.
Republicans see a couple of culprits here. They blame the state high court for the new map, in effect saying the Democrat majority on the court did what Democrats had accused Republicans in the Legislature of doing for years – stacking the odds in favor of their pols.
The national GOP took a look at the new map and in essence told Kim, “good luck, you’re on your own.” They did next to nothing to help her campaign.
Rep. Ryan Costello, R-6, of Chester County, also saw the writing on the wall. He inspected the new boundaries of his once overwhelming red district and immediately turned blue. He opted not to run again, and seemingly has spent much of the time since as a pundit on national TV, lamenting the fate of center-of-the-road candidates in the era of Trump.
He’s not the only one. Local Republicans have been quick to point at the White House as the source of their midterm meltdown. There is some merit to what they say. Clearly, if this was a referendum on the first two years of President Donald Trump, suburban voters, including those here in Delaware County, offered a decisive thumb’s down.
I agree – to a point.
Yes, it was the Year of the Woman. Fueled by #MeToo passions, suburban voters unquestionably were sending a message to the White House.
But there is something else going on here in Delaware County.
This was the second straight election day debacle for the Delco GOP. This started last November, when Democrats stunned the GOP by doing something they had not done in decades. While the Delco Dems had been making some progress in taking local municipal and state seats, they had failed to dent the last remaining vestige of old-time GOP power in the county. That would be the Media Courthouse.
That ended last November when Dems took both seats on County Council, along with all three county row offices up for grabs. It was a stunner. And it hasn’t stopped since. A Democrat tsunami rolled over Delco in the midterm election.
Now GOP Chairman Reilly (yes, he still hates it when I refer to him as “boss”) is likely moving on. He’s in line for a job with the state GOP as Southeastern Pennsylvania Caucus Chair.
The new GOP leader will have work to do.
He or she will be in a most unfamiliar position for the local GOP.
Underdog.
This is no longer a red county. The numbers don’t lie. There are now more registered Democrats in the county than Republicans. And the margin is growing, not getting closer.
The days when the GOP enjoyed a nearly three-to-one voter registration edge and ruled the county with an iron fist are over.
Somewhere, John McClure must be rolling over in his grave.
Right there beside one local Republican campaign after another.
Drowned by a blue wave.
Philip E. Heron is editor of the Daily Times. Call him at 484-521-3147. E-mail him at editor@delcotimes.com. Make sure you check out his blog, The Heron’s Nest, every day at http://delcoheronsnest.blogspot. com. Follow him on Twitter, @ philheron.