What’s nice about being involved with politics is you get to meet people with passion, conviction, empathy and intelligence. And you don’t even have to meet them in person to recognize a kindred spirit. So please read what Bonnie Chang has recently written in the Beacon about the Democratic Congressional Primary in her opinion piece, “What PA-01 Voters Told Us Tuesday Night.“
She seems to have read my mind. It is wonderful to meet such a passionate and intelligent person who cares about our democracy.
Lucia Simonelli was such a person I met too. Bonnie and Lucia emailed me from time to time during the ordeal as did several other younger passionate people who supported her campaign. Luckily that alleged Big Tent of the Democratic Party left a tiny opening for Lucia to crawl into the race so 27,756 Democrats got a chance to vote for her and express to the local Democratic Party that their voices need to be heard. I hope they listen.
But there were two experiences of her embattled campaign that raises some doubt in me that my Party will listen. The first was the endorsement process. I won’t go into the details here, but what I saw and what surely Lucia felt was that the endorsement process was overall not welcoming to new candidates. In a word, it is undemocratic and needs an overhaul to make it consistent with our party’s stated principles. Our party rightly is concerned about the MAGA attack on democratic principles. Therefore, it is all the more important for our party to practice those principles in its treatment of candidates. Immediately after the primary I emailed a reform proposal to the executive director of the Bucks County Democratic Committee (BCDC). I hope it doesn’t fall on deaf ears. Not only is practicing democratic values in the treatment of new candidates the right thing to do in principle, it is also strategically important since there is always a shortage of people who are willing to spend so much time and energy to run for office. When new candidates don’t feel welcome the first time, it is doubtful that they will return for another struggle.
The second experience was the hellhole that is social media.
Having run for office in 2014, I know from personal experience how much of a personal sacrifice it is. I was recruited to run just a few days before the deadline because no one else wanted the job. So what depressed me was the spurious attacks Lucia received on social media from her fellow Democrats. The armchair experts disregarded the gift Lucia was providing the party through her self-sacrificing effort to champion progressive ideals and values to the Democratic community. Instead, they viewed her as an outsider whose objective was to hurt the true authentic endorsed candidate. So of course Lucia was “a MAGA plant.” She was an “extreme” progressive and we all know progressives never win. She “lied” about their invincible candidate even though I personally heard what Bob Harvie said with my own ears. She had no right to run because she was new to the game (although she did have extensive legislative experience in the Senate. And is not everyone at one time a newcomer?) And of course she didn’t have enough money so she was useless since money of course always trumps principles, right? She was also unelectable in November since folks had a magic crystal ball that assured them that she would lose and that the endorsed candidate would win. Why doesn’t she just go away? She doesn’t belong here.
What dawned on me was that all this negativity, as well as the desire to control the endorsement process, was motivated for the most part by fear on the part of the party establishment. And I get it. What this administration is doing is frightening since it is attacking so many American ideals and institutions we hold dearly. So the old Democratic guard who spent their life building and growing a successful Party here don’t want to see their work in ruins. Therefore, many, out of this fear and intense desire to win, clung to the idea of an invincible savior who must be their champion in the fall at all costs.
READ: Lucia Simonelli Wants PA-01 Democrats to Vote Their Hopes, Not Their Fears
As a result, they were willing to cut corners and engage in uncivil attacks to destroy a candidacy they feared would ruin their last only hope. And of course there always is the hidden motive of holding on to power. We don’t want some young upstart who parachuted in with progressive system-changing ideas to tell us what to do. However, we are supposed to be a Big Tent Party that welcomes diversity and new ideas, not a Party that wants to make everyone conform to the what the Party machine decides. That’s the other Party. But fear makes us take shortcuts around our principles.
So the deck was stacked against Lucia from the get go. Which makes it all the more amazing what she accomplished. She convinced 27,756 or 35% of those who voted in PA-01 that she should be their representative, not because of her money, her alleged inevitable electability, her endorsement by the party leaders, her safe status quo policies, or her name on a goldenrod, but because of her sincere expression of bold, progressive ideals and values for the working class. And despite all these barriers she had to face and the fear of so many, she pulled it off. Thousands saw her sincere passion and chose her. She did a fantastic job.
Other things bothered me too.
Democrats here always complain about our silent Congressman who is too afraid to have town halls. He also refused to debate our last candidate even at the traditional community college forum. When you are in the lead, why give oxygen to your opponent? So we only had one such forum/debate with Lucia and Bob. BCDC did not facilitate multiple events across the county and Bob refused several offers to meet Lucia in public forums. So he played it safe at the expense of creating robust events where the electorate could be informed directly from the candidates about their platform and character. So fear and misinformation informed the voters instead of civil honest discourse. What a lost opportunity to model democratic civility.
READ: ‘Almost Worthless’: Progressives Rip 2024 Autopsy the DNC Didn’t Want You To See
Now that Bob has won the primary, I hope he makes a special effort to bring those 27,756 voters into his camp. He needs every vote to beat the Fitzpatrick machine. The party has lost against the Fitzpatrick machine for almost 20 years. We need fresh ideas for Bob to win. I hope he listens to the 27,756 voters and develops an inclusive, appealing platform that excites the electorate with a bold vision of what America should be.
I marched with Lucia in the New Hope Pride parade. It was a special joyous day of acceptance of the freedom of individuality. I handed out her campaign literature to the people in the crowd and summarized her platform and experience. Everyone was impressed. At the end of our march, I spoke to her about her experience as a candidate. Despite the arduousness of her campaign, Lucia still had a smile on her face. Yes, it had been a challenge, but I sensed she was proud that she did what she set out to do; namely, express her progressive vision and ideals to the people who would benefit from being represented by someone who would do her best to make the world a better place for them and their children.
I wonder if she dreamed on that sunny day in New Hope that her message of hope and change would have landed so well on 27,756 political souls. Maybe that’s why she still smiled so brightly at the end of the parade despite the difficulty of her recent journey in Bucks County politics. I hope she runs again one day. We need more people like Lucia in our politics.
Let’s open that Big Tent widely next time with a friendly welcome.
