Chester County Revolution

Since most of you reading this are probably from one of the other 66 counties in our great Commonwealth, let me give you a little background on one of the three original counties. We're the wealthiest county in Pennsylvania. We have a large rural area, we have many wealthy suburbs. The Democratic Party has been in the minority here for as long as there has been a party. The only Democratic Presidential candidate we've voted for in the past 90 years was LBJ. We hadn't had a Democrat represent our county since 1893.

Last year, we've elected Andrew Dinniman to the State Senate, helped send Joe Sestak to the US Congress, went 65% for Ed Rendell and 55% for Bob Casey. And of course we elected Barbara McIlvaine Smith to the State House, giving our party Democratic control for the first time since the early 90s. What happened here?

Obviously, there are certain factors out of our control. Demographic shifts have been significant. More Democrats are moving into the county, and that has helped. And we've also been well served by the way Republicans have ruined their own party. As the hard-core conservatives have taken over, a lot of moderate Republicans have been driven out of the party here. Barb herself was a Republican until about six years ago, when she became fed up with them and switched her registration. We definitely need to hope that the GOP doesn't learn their lesson: radical values are not popular here, and probably aren't anywhere else in this state.
But that alone wouldn't be enough to put us over the edge. The lesson worth learning here is that we need to work everywhere, and we need Young Democrats to win.

Only 10 years ago it would've been inconceivable to think that we'd start trending blue. I was only 10 when Bill Clinton ran in 1992, but neither then nor in his re-elect did I ever see a Clinton sign. This area was as Republican as you could imagine. But through lots of hard work we narrowed the gap. Now, we're able to go from a firewall for them, to a hotly contested area, and if we can keep working, make it solidly blue. There's no reason we can't replicate this in Adams and York and Dauphin and Lancaster Counties, and really anywhere. It was the people who ran for these offices here in Chester County back when it was a pipe-dream that we'd win who made it possible for us to win now.

We've begun something here we call our 73 Municipality Strategy. In Chester County, we have 73 different townships, boroughs and even a city. Our Democratic base had been the city of Coatesville, the borough of Phoenixville and my home town of West Chester (which has only become a Democratic town in the last decade). But when State Senator Dinniman ran, he won (sometimes handily) in very Republican and very rural townships. Our party has become extremely organized and active in some very wealthy Republican areas (like Tredyffrin and Willistown) and even in the mostly rural southern part of our county. We don't take any vote for granted and work to build the party everywhere.

It's vital that we do the same in Pennsylvania. Of course Philadelphia and Pittsburgh will always play important roles, they're world class cities and Democratic strongholds. But we need to focus on all 67 counties. Philadelphia went for John Kerry by 412,000 votes, and that was vital to us winning the state. But Monroe County only missed going for Kerry by four votes. Would it have effected the outcome? No. But it'd be an important step in turning Monroe blue. Some might ask, why would we want to focus on Bedford County? John Kerry only received 26% of the vote. Well, in 1972 George McGovern barely matched that here, and in 2008 we're going to go Democratic. We need to start somewhere, and who better than the Young Democrats to start it?

Maybe the most important thing to take out of this though is the power that young people can wield. We here in the Chester County Young Democrats made this race our #1 priority. Now, we had a lot of races to pick from: Joe Sestak (our #2 priority), Lois Murphy, Ed Rendell, Bob Casey and other state house races. But we chose Barb because she has consistently reached out to us and made young people feel both welcome and important in her campaign. This is exactly what all candidates need to do: realize that we're more than just foot soldiers, but can be valuable parts of campaigns and make a difference. Because we did it here.

Dan TymanPresident, Chester County Young Democrats