Bucks County is shifting red, and its commissioners race this fall could have implications for 2024

Less than a month from Election Day, Nicholas Cicchino was debating who to vote for in the Bucks County commissioners’ race.

It was a mild October morning in Perkasie as Cicchino, a 65-year-old registered Republican, clutched campaign fliers from two Democratic candidates who were canvassing the block.

“To me, whoever does the right job, it doesn’t matter what side they’re on,” Cicchino said.

Those candidates, Democrats Bob Harvie and Diane Marseglia, are running against Republicans Gene DiGirolamo and Pamela Van Blunk for three seats on the county’s board of commissioners in the Nov. 7 general election.

Off-year contests like this rarely garner much attention. But this year, the heated Bucks County race is the most competitive in Philadelphia’s collar counties and could signal how Pennsylvania — and possibly the nation — will vote in 2024.

Bucks is a reliably purple county that is seen as critical in national and statewide races. It’s also home to many moderate or ticket-splitting voters, like Cicchino, who lives in Jamison but was visiting a home in Perkasie when the candidates came knocking.

“Many of us view Bucks as a hotly contested place,” said Berwood Yost, director of the Franklin & Marshall College Poll, which tracks public attitudes toward political campaigns. “It’s one of the most important bellwethers in Pennsylvania.”

Democrats won control of the county commissioners board in 2019 for the first time in almost 40 years, and now the GOP is trying to win it back.

Commissioners manage the county’s budget and its thousands of employees, and many of their votes are bipartisan. This election cycle, however, partisan divides have given the race an existential edge, with candidates emphasizing issues such as election integrity, crime, and abortion.

The parties are also divided over infighting in the county’s Republican-controlled school districts over LGBTQ representation. Though county commissioners don’t have power over schools, the school board controversies have attracted national attention — and echoed debates playing out at the national level.

DiGirolamo, Harvie, and Marseglia are currently serving on the three-member board, while Van Blunk is the county controller. The top three vote getters will serve a four-year term.

The race in Bucks stands out from the other Philadelphia collar counties. Democrats also flipped control of Delaware and Chester Counties four years ago, but those areas are now more reliably blue and their local races are not as competitive this fall.

In fact, Bucks is the only county in the region shifting red; voter registration numbers show the Democrats’ advantage this year has shrunk to less than 5,000 votes — around half of what it was in 2021.

“People are very unhappy with the national Democrats,” said Patricia Poprik, chair of the Bucks County GOP. “We don’t have to do a lot of convincing.”

The county’s electorate spans dense, urban neighborhoods that border Philadelphia, affluent suburbs, and semi-rural farmlands. Its politics are equally as varied. Bucks voters favored President Joe Biden in 2020, and Sen. John Fetterman and Gov. Josh Shapiro last year.

But Republican U.S. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick has held the county’s congressional seat since 2017, and in 2021, a slate of Bucks row offices flipped to the GOP, including Van Blunk for controller.

Harvie, a Bristol native, won in 2019 alongside Marseglia, of Middletown, who first won her seat in 2007.

Planned Parenthood and Shapiro (appearing in a recent television ad) have backed them, along with Philadelphia’s Fraternal Order of Police and former Republican U.S. Rep. Jim Greenwood.

Their Republican colleague, DiGirolamo, is a former GOP state representative from Bensalem, and was also elected four years ago. New on the scene is Van Blunk, an attorney who lives in Doylestown. Both GOP candidates have received police backing from Bucks’ FOP lodge and the state trooper’s association.

Both Van Blunk and DiGirolamo said crime and the opioid epidemic are major concerns among voters, and said they’d focus on connecting residents to treatment and hiring more sheriff’s deputies to serve a backlog of warrants.

DiGirolamo said he’s seen enthusiasm for a rebuke of Democrats.

“I think a little bit of that might be the national scene,” DiGirolamo said. “I don’t think President Biden is the most popular person right now. You look at inflation, the cost of things. People are concerned about the economy, wages.”

Harvie, in turn, said any GOP assertion that Philadelphia crime is creeping into Bucks an “old tactic.”

Under Democratic control, he offered, the board has increased public safety spending by over $1 million for the sheriff’s office and district attorney’s office, and launched a program that pairs a social worker with law enforcement for mental health and drug-related calls. Meanwhile, state statistics show that violent crime fell in Bucks since Democrats took the board.

Commissioners oversee election administration and are responsible for voting to certify their county’s election results.

Democrats are warning of a potential threat to the integrity of the 2024 election should Republicans take control.

Harvie said the county faced “dangerous” legal challenges from the Trump campaign and state Republicans in 2020 over counting mail ballots.

“You’re fracturing people’s trust in the most basic institution we have,” Harvie said.

That urgency was echoed by top party leaders. State Sen. Sharif Street, chair of the Pennsylvania Democrats, said retention of the election board was “crucial,” ahead of the presidential election.

“Bucks County will shape the future of politics in Pennsylvania,” said Street.

Both Van Blunk and DiGirolamo said they would work to keep elections secure by boosting surveillance at Bucks’ 11 ballot drop boxes. But Democrats warned that Republican control of the board could put the future of some of those boxes into question.

The GOP is also facing criticism over Poprik, who made headlines after signing on in 2020 as one of the Trump campaign’s “false electors” that could be used to disrupt the certification of results. Poprik said her participation would’ve been dependent on the Trump campaign’s lawsuits succeeding before the certification.

Asked if she considered herself part of the MAGA wing of the party, Van Blunk said, “I am a Bucks County Republican, and I’m focused on this year’s election.”

The conflicts in some of Bucks’ largest school districts, including Central Bucks and Council Rock, over LGBTQ representation in both the classroom and on library shelves has also played a role in the campaign.

Van Blunk said that she does not support book bans, and that it’s the job of school boards and parents to determine what is appropriate for kids.

Marseglia said commissioners have the opportunity to speak out on these issues.

“What I hear from teachers in every district we’ve gone to, they are very anxious,” Marseglia said. “We could generally stay out of it… but now that it’s gotten ugly, political, I think kids are at stake here. We’ve had to step up and say something.”

Democrats are also campaigning on protecting abortion rights. At an early October Planned Parenthood rally in Middletown Township, Harvie and Marseglia spoke about protecting abortion access (The county signed an amicus brief to the U.S. Supreme Court last year in an effort to protect access to the abortion pill mifepristone).

The gathering, held outside of a township building, had a small-town feel. But for voters like Stephen Monson, an 82-year-old from Langhorne, there were strong parallels between the commissioners race and national politics.

“We have to maintain choice, number one,” Monson said, when asked what issues were important to him. “And voting rights. They are fundamental to the whole process.”