By Will Wood

For MediaNews Group

Over the weekend, I attended Chester County Judge Lawrence E. Wood’s memorial service. While my uncle Larry was probably best known for the 26 years he spent on the bench, he also served his country as a JAG officer in the Navy. He sang in church choirs. When he retired from service as a judge, he devoted his time to numerous nonprofits.

Any of these would be a great bullet point on a resume. But the thing that has kept coming back to me in recent years is his work in the Chester County Republican Party in the 1970s.

Back then, chairman Theodore “Teddy” Rubino had a lock on party leadership. One of his main levers of control was the open ballot system for selecting candidates and leadership. By having the votes cast by a show of hands, Rubino was able to see who was voting with him. Many party officials were employed by or had business with the county, which gave Rubino, as a county commissioner, additional leverage. Rubino could apply pressure to those who did not toe his line and reward those who did.

Enter Larry and a small group of young Republicans. They believed in the party’s principles and platform, but believed that, at the county level, the party was being destroyed from within. (Rubino was later convicted of extortion in his capacity as commissioner.)

It took a lot for the “Independent Republicans,” as they were called, to break ranks with Rubino and return the party to its constituents. It took persistence. It took hours of canvassing. It took organizing, shaking hands and meeting and greeting voters.

But most of all, it took courage.

Chester County was a very Republican place back then. Larry and his fellow Independents were not just risking their political futures but their non-political careers, businesses and professional standing by working against GOP and county leadership.

If the story of a party whose leadership demands loyalty to its principals rather than its principles and that will not hesitate to lash out at and remove fellow party members who break ranks sounds like a modern tale, well, it is. And that is why I have been thinking so much about Larry’s work with the Independents lately.

The obvious analog here is how President Donald Trump appears to be using the whole executive branch as a tool to settle vendettas against people who voted or has spoken out against him — be they politicians, prosecutors, entire states or comedians — and about how in both of his administrations he has, without hesitation, turned against our partners, our allies, the United Nations, his own party members and appointees, fellow Americans, and even his own voters.

Those around him are forced to contort or abandon their principles to serve his ever-changing whims as they desperately try to cling to power.

But the Democrats don’t get a bye here. They should be engaging in some serious soul searching. Many voters have grown wary and weary of how much focus is placed on a litany of litmus tests but how little real progress has been made for working/middle class Americans. While Trump is wrong to claim that he won in a landslide (his electoral vote margin was slimmer than 13 of the last 20 presidential elections), there was a crucial shift in voters away from President Joe Biden toward Trump.

I noted above that Chester County used to be solidly Republican. Democrats may think that the new purple hue comes from a surging popularity of liberal idealism, and to some extent that may be true, but it is worth remembering that in the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s, both parties had large centrist wings. There was room for a lot of moderate-to-liberal Republicans in Chester County politics. They have not changed their values, they have simply changed their voting habits as the GOP marched ever rightward.

But now both parties seem to be careening toward the fringes. By no coincidence, the percentage of independent voters has risen over the last decade and swing states seem to be swingier. As both parties work furiously to consolidate their bases prioritizing electoral victories over effective policy, they risk becoming irrelevant to the bulk of voters — who live in the middle — and at the peril of the republic.

What will it take for our leaders to put voters’ priorities over their own?

Something our current political class seems short on: Courage.