After candidate withdraws, Delco Republicans endorse former county employee in council race
After online attacks over DEI caused Tasliym Morales to withdraw, Delaware County GOP leaders endorsed Liz Piazza.
Delaware County Republicans have settled on a new endorsed candidate for county council after days of online attacks pushed party leaders’ original pick out of the race.
The Delaware County Republican Committee voted Monday evening to endorse Liz Piazza, a former county worker and former statehouse candidate, to run alongside former Upper Darby Councilman Brian Burke for a four-year term on the county’s five-person council.
Republicans haven’t held a seat on the county’s governing board since 2020. After a 23% property tax hike last year, they see 2025 as a key opportunity to regain representation.
Over the weekend, Delaware County Democrats endorsed incumbent Councilman Richard Womack and County Controller Joanne Phillips to run for the seats.
The local election cycle got off to a rocky start for Republicans, with Chester Upland School Board member Tasliym Morales, the only Black woman in the race, withdrawing her candidacy days after receiving the party endorsement along with Burke last week.
Morales faced a series of online attacks from other Republicans insisting that she wasn’t a real Republican and that she supported diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, which President Donald Trump is working to ban on the federal level.
The attacks mainly came from Leah Hoopes, a Delaware County Republican known for making false claims of election fraud.
Piazza, who had originally planned to run in the GOP primary without an endorsement, denounced the efforts to push Morales out of the race and said she was grateful to receive the former candidate’s support.
“At no point did I ever disrespect the party or anybody else. I felt like I had a very good background working for the county,” said Piazza, who is from Upper Providence. “I felt like I was a good candidate, and that was the reason why I thought I would try and do it on my own.”
Piazza spent years working in the Delaware County Court of Common Pleas’ domestic relations department, where she served as a liaison for judges and attorneys, ran the warrant division, and froze and seized bank accounts for non-custodial parents.
She has worked in the private sector helping to run a family owned landscaping business for the past four years.
Piazza and Burke, however, are not the only Republicans running.
Charlie Alexander, a right-wing activist who has made repeated unfounded claims about undocumented immigrants in the county, is running in the primary without an endorsement. Alexander urged Republicans to boycott Monday’s meeting and call for an endorsement-free primary.
The pushback against Morales highlighted divisions within the collar-county party. But Frank Agovino, the chair of the Delaware County GOP, said that the party remained unified and that the dissent was simply a “passionate minority.” He pledged to take the primary challenge seriously.
“If they can just focus their energies on the opposition party, I think everybody could get along,” he said.