Democrats sweep suburban counties
HARRISBURG >> Democrats completed an electoral sweep of Philadelphia’s four suburban counties, long a bastion of Republican control and a crucial bellwether for statewide candidates.
Democrats won control in Delaware and Chester counties in Tuesday’s election for the first time going back to the Civil War and won control in Bucks County for the first time since the 1980s.
Democrats took control of Montgomery County several years ago. The fast-growing counties now account for more than one in five of all registered voters, and they tend to vote in higher proportions than the rest of the state.
The Democratic victories in Delaware and Chester counties were particularly strong, winning every countywide race, including contests for county council, district attorney and county judge.
For three decades, the counties had been growing increasingly liberal, but the trend seems to have accelerated since Donald Trump’s election as president.
Alan Novak, a former state Republican Party chairman from Chester County, said strong Democratic results in Philadelphia’s suburbs Tuesday reflect voters motivated against Trump and by good candidates, good campaigning on local issues and the lure of capturing control of
county government.
“They gave their voters a reason to come out and that was, ‘For the first time in history, we can be a majority in the courthouse,’ and that’s a big motivator,” Novak said. “There’s the Trump factor, there was the local factor.”
Trump lost badly in Philadelphia’s suburbs in 2016, although Republicans in those four counties
still held onto many down-ballot offices that year. Since then, the GOP has lost dozens of offices there, including two congressional seats and a majority of state legislative seats for the first time in modern history.
Republicans were not without victories. Berks County was a lone bright spot in southeastern Pennsylvania, with Republicans keeping majority control of the county commissioners’ board and winning most of the county row offices.
Elsewhere, GOP victories came in areas of Pennsylvania where the population is stagnant.
In western Pennsylvania, where Democrats have been losing seats for the past two decades, Republicans took back control in Westmoreland and Washington counties.
In other areas, Democrats appeared to have won control in Lehigh County, giving the party a majority on the county board of commissioners for the first time in four decades.