Since our founding, Turn Bucks Blue has known that winning locally and nationally means gaining the trust of more than loyal Democrats. Motivating unaffiliated and disaffected voters in suburban swing counties like Bucks is essential to reviving the Democratic party and saving American democracy. We need candidates who speak to people who don’t reflexively believe Democrats speak for them. And we need to champion such candidates with funding, mentorship, and loud endorsements.

 

Turning Bucks blue won’t be easy. The Republican party machine has lodged itself here during 30 years of local dominance . The population – less diverse, aging, and, in Lower Bucks, working class, skews conservative.

 

So the strategy we employ won’t focus on just the races for state house and county commissioners. We will fund infrastructure. We will support able and electable candidates to serve as municipal supervisors, school board directors, and common pleas judges, as well as tax collectors, auditors, and judges of elections. Most of us think about these essential offices as check boxes when we are in the voter’s booth (if we think about them at all). But TBB knows how fundamentally these positions impact a community. That’s why we put our funds at the service of local school board candidates who could (and did!) defeat those who would ban books and censor free speech.

 

We are local Democrats. We know Bucks’ voters as our neighbors. If we focus on gaining the support of those neighbors, on putting qualified, relatable candidates in office at all levels, and on building infrastructure, we can win.  And if this strategy can turn Bucks reliably blue it will be picked up by Democrats in other parts of the country.  Democrats will deserve the respect we have lost. We will muster the votes needed to the win big in national elections and put a halt to Trump's destruction of American democracy.