Editor’s note: As it does every year, The Morning Call asked the Lehigh Valley’s top elected leaders to look back at 2025 and look ahead at 2026. Responses are running this first week of 2026 from U.S. Rep. Ryan Mackenzie, the newly elected executives of Lehigh and Northampton counties, and the mayors of Allentown, Bethlehem and Easton.
I’m humbled to be your next Lehigh County executive. We made history by electing the youngest county executive in the history of Pennsylvania and prevailed with a mandate to act boldly and decisively in the four years ahead. Our campaign promised a new generation of leadership, and declared that we needed a new type of politics and governance that moves beyond the broken framing of left vs. right and red vs. blue.
As I enter this new year and role, I’m excited and energized. However, I recognize so many are starting 2026 with the same anxieties that defined 2025. The cost of living is higher than ever, from housing and groceries to the price of providing basic public services like trash collection. And our toxic political culture continues to divide and anger us, piling onto the strain. We are at the dawn of the 250th anniversary of our republic, and faith in its ability to deliver progress for all is lower than ever. Despite these challenges, I believe that we will endure not because of our institutions, but because of the individuals it is made of. Our destiny is the pursuit of a more perfect union — a better nation for ourselves and our children.
We’ve always met darkness with determination to find the light, and confronted imperfect promises of equality and justice with an enduring spirit of reinvention and rebirth. Our greatness isn’t found in any single point in time in our past, but rather an unshakable sense of forward momentum towards the future.
We are all inheritors of that history and spirit of purposeful citizenship: pioneers and patriots who struck down tyranny and stitched together a continent from sea to shining sea, abolitionists and activists who broke the bonds of oppression and expanded the blanket of opportunity. Innovators, architects and astronauts, who conquered the stars and skies, and scientists that pushed us into new frontiers of space and technology. We molded our mountains into monuments, repurposed mighty rivers and built bridges and buildings to rival the Great Pyramids of Giza.
At the core of this success was the politics and patriotism of addition, not subtraction. Leaders who believed in building and not breaking things offered a path forward that inspired instead of inflamed, albeit never perfectly. I believe our strength has always been an invisible string of civic spirit, an enduring faith that we the people, in this nation, truly can accomplish anything together, knowing the only limits are our own ambitions.
Today it seems that spirit is sapped, overtaken by the sickness of zero-sum competition which tells each of us someone else’s success can only come at our own expense or failure. This public misconception is what I want my administration to disprove, once and for all. My administration will be focused on proving that together we can defeat division, rebuild our sense of community and restore our sense of spirit, not in a higher power, but higher purpose and ourselves.
I call that vision OneLehigh which means all of us together and no one left behind. OneLehigh means that locally we must act boldly, decisively and urgently to reduce the cost of housing and address homelessness, building more housing itself and buying older housing before greedy corporations price out families. OneLehigh means regionalizing police and fire and basic municipal services to reduce the costs of providing them, acknowledging that old ways and systems aren’t working anymore. OneLehigh means stepping up locally to take on child care, paid family leave and medical debt relief. OneLehigh means coming together around the shared purpose of building a better politics in our own backyard, together. OneLehigh is about restoring a sense of positive patriotism and civic pride.
We must defend democracy and expand access to the ballot box at a time when it is under siege. We must protect access to health care like mental health and addiction treatment, and ensure that Cedarbrook remains publicly operated. We need a new era of partnership with our universities, hospitals and regional employers to strengthen our valley.
Now isn’t a time for the unambitious or unimaginative, or naysayers who defend their failed approaches without offering an alternative, branding inaction as “do no harm.” I have no patience for those who sit silent while a corrupt, cruel and chaotic authoritarian administration harms our neighbors, rips away their health care and enriches their wealthy donors at the expense of entire communities.
I believe people want a life well-lived, not one of luxury. They want security and prosperity for themselves and their families, and a government that acts in their best interest and fights for their quality of life. We must show them that the government can be a force for good and not greed, and through it, we can in fact accomplish great things together.
This is a contributed opinion column. Josh Siegel is the incoming Lehigh County executive. The views expressed in this piece are those of its individual author and should not be interpreted as reflecting the views of this publication. For more details on commentaries, read our guide to guest opinions at themorningcall.com/opinions.