Primary season in Delaware County - that charming time when party loyalty is professed loudly—until it’s inconvenient.
More than once now, a familiar pattern has emerged. A candidate loses a Republican primary, then shrugs, pivots, and stays on the ballot anyway—clinging to Independent or Conservative lines like political life rafts. Party be damned. Voter choice? Apparently, optional.
To be clear: this isn’t about party politics. It’s about principle. If a candidate seeks the nomination of a party, enters the race, stands before the electorate and loses, what’s left to prove?
Remaining on the ballot may be legal. It’s certainly strategic. But it’s also a form of denial, one that suggests voters didn’t know better the first time and need a do-over. It erodes the point of the primary: to allow voters within a party to choose their representative. If a candidate doesn’t accept the outcome, why ask for the party’s endorsement at all?
Delaware County isn’t New York City. Here, elections are intimate. You run into your supervisor at the post office. You coach Little League with your school board member. The line between neighbor and officeholder is blessedly thin. Which is why voters notice when political gamesmanship edges out integrity.
And there’s something else brewing. Call it weariness. Call it a shift. But the voters of this county—farmers, teachers, small business owners, young families trying to make rent—are not particularly enamored with the gray-haired fraternity of career politicians. The ones who circle the wagons, trade favors like baseball cards, and cling to local power like it’s a birthright.
You can see it in the crowds at candidate forums. You hear it in the tone of letters to the editor and in aggressive social media posts. There is an impatience with insiders who talk about roads and taxes and budgets, but never seem to fix them. There is a hunger for public servants who serve the public—not themselves.
So, to the perennial candidates whose names return to ballots like weeds in spring: consider stepping aside when your own party says no. Honor the process. Respect the vote. Let someone new take a turn behind the wheel.
Because this county deserves more than a rerun. It deserves representation that reflects its present—not its past.
And maybe, just maybe, the path to restoring faith in politics—especially local politics—starts with knowing when not to run.
Lillian Browne is the editor of The Reporter and can be reached at editor@the-reporter.net