Across the nation, Election Day results show that voters care about diversity and democracy | Editorial

Tuesday’s election was a history-making day in Philadelphia and a decisive victory for abortion rights and democracy in Pennsylvania and across the country.

A majority of voters are clearly exhausted from the chaos and culture wars that Donald Trump and his band of MAGA followers have promoted during the past eight years. From governor’s mansions to state courts to school boards, voters do not want a handful of extreme officials imposing their narrow views on others. Instead, they want common sense, tolerance, and decency.

In Philadelphia, Cherelle Parker was elected the first female mayor (and just the fourth African American) after 99 men. Her gritty and compelling story of being raised by her grandparents after her mother died when she was 11 is a reminder of the struggles and opportunities that still exist in our city and beyond.

During an impromptu news conference before she cast her ballot on Election Day, Parker thanked her high school English teacher and other elected officials who supported and encouraged her along the way. Her moving comments underscored the positive impact educators, communities, and local government can have when they work together. Now begins the hard work of harnessing that same energy to lift all Philadelphians.

» READ MORE: Cherelle Parker for Philadelphia’s 100th mayor | Endorsement

Parker’s election was not the only history maker.

Rue Landau became the first openly LGBTQ person elected to City Council. Landau, a housing rights attorney, will be a strong voice for marginalized communities while serving as a beacon of the benefits of diversity that have long strengthened the United States.

While Trump and other MAGA supporters have sought to divide the country, Landau had a simple call to action: “This is a time of unity where we all need to come together, no matter what background, what neighborhood we come from.”

Meanwhile, Nina Ahmad will become the first South Asian member of City Council and the first immigrant in recent memory. While Trump and others in the GOP have long stoked hate and anger toward immigrants, Ahmad is a study in contrast.

At 21, she fled the war in Bangladesh, learned English by watching reruns of Happy Days, and eventually earned a doctorate in chemistry from the University of Pennsylvania. A women’s rights advocate, Ahmad serves as president of the Pennsylvania chapter of the National Organization for Women. Her background provides a bulwark against GOP attacks on immigrants, science, and women’s rights.

In the Philadelphia suburbs, voters turned out for Democratic candidates running for Board of Commissioner positions in Bucks, Chester, Delaware, and Montgomery Counties. Given that commissioners oversee elections in their respective counties, the clean sweep signals strong support for voting rights and election integrity, which have been under attack by Trump and his GOP supporters since he lost the 2020 presidential race.

The strong support for Democrats running the counties also signals that voters want commonsense policies aimed at addressing pressing issues such as mental health, opioid addiction, and climate change.

The same goes for school boards that were taken over by extreme GOP candidates fighting mask mandates and espousing QAnon conspiracies while pushing book bans and attacks on LGBTQ students. Voters in the Central Bucks School District rejected all the Republican candidates, including the wife of Paul Martino, a venture capitalist who spent $500,000 on school board elections.

» READ MORE: Book bans have no place in a free society | Editorial

Martino was not the only one who tried to buy an election. A political action committee backed by Jeffrey Yass, Pennsylvania’s richest man, spent more than $4 million in support of Republican Judge Carolyn Carluccio in her bid for a seat on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. She lost decisively to Judge Daniel D. McCaffery.

Election integrity and abortion rights were the top issues in the Supreme Court race. Carluccio struggled throughout the campaign to clearly state that Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election. She also removed a passage from her campaign website that described her as a “defender” of “All Life Under the Law.”

Abortion rights remains a top issue for many voters of all political stripes since the U.S. Supreme Court — after being tilted to the far-right by three Trump appointees — overturned Roe v. Wade, striking down a nearly 50-year precedent that gave women the right to have an abortion.

The backlash has been fierce. Ohio voters approved a constitutional amendment that guaranteed a right to abortion in that state — the seventh state to do so since Roe was reversed. Voters in Virginia backed Democratic state lawmakers who supported abortion rights, dealing a blow to the Republican governor there.

In Kentucky, the Democratic governor was reelected after campaigning against his Republican rival’s support for a near-total ban on abortion, underscoring how even voters in red states oppose stripping away abortion rights.

From Philadelphia to the suburbs and across the country, Election Day was a victory for diversity, individual rights, and democracy — the things that have truly made America great. But as long as Trump and his MAGA supporters loom, the authoritarian threat posed by the extreme wing of the Republican Party remains, and the fight to preserve the American Experiment continues.