America

9/11/2001- Never Forget

/ Rich Wilkins / 1 Comment

If you walk into a convenience store right now, there are kids buying cigarettes, or college kids in bars buying booze, who were not alive on 9/11/2001. There are kids serving in the United States military in foreign countries right now who were not alive on 9/11. I can state this kind of unequivocally now- 9/11 is a long time ago, it is now just a moment in history. There’s a fairly good argument that those moments on that Tuesday morning 24 years ago changed the course of history more than any other point in this century, and yet, it’s not really a part of the political conversation now. We are no longer in Afghanistan, the war that was a direct response to the attacks on America that day. The moment of national unity that 9/11 ignited is most certainly dead and in the ground.

Imagine having a President with 90% approval today, albeit only because society rallied around him. George W. Bush basically exhausted all of that good will and probably is not a President we should emulate today. With that said, imagine any figure in American life taking a bullhorn and telling the assembled first responders at Ground Zero “I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.” The unity in that moment in time was remarkable. It’s something we have never felt since. It’s something we probably will never hear again. Not long after this, it was all gone amidst fights over Iraq, Katrina, Abu Ghraib, and all the other political wars of that moment. But at least for a moment, we had it.

I remember everything about that day. I remember driving to school and remarking that gas was under a dollar. I remember that the sky was a perfect blue, almost completely cloudless here, roughly 75 miles from Manhattan. I remember that we were supposed to have a cross-country meet that day at home. I remember being in Latin I (I had spots to kill as a senior) and saying to a friend named Tarin that this was “definitely al-Qaeda,” (I read a lot of news back then) when we honestly really didn’t know yet. I remember being sent back to homeroom after that period. I remember sitting in senior lunch (privileges to go out to lunch hadn’t started yet) with my friends and talking to our principal about what was happening. I can almost recite the whole day from memory. I remember the weeks after too. I remember going to New York City, to Shanksville, and to Washington, D.C., all somewhat by chance, and seeing the destruction. I remember the terror of the unknown that followed. I was in the Anthrax scare in the U.S. Senate office buildings (I went to meet Rick Santorum. Yes, really.) and remember being quarantined for a night after a girl with me got sick. I remember the military members with machine guns at the Eagles-Giants game in October, the first Monday Night game in New York after the attacks. I think the enduring image though, for me and for everyone else, was still watching the first responders run into the Trade Centers, and not come out until we saw them dug out by their own colleagues in the weeks that came after. It was sick. It was disgusting. They were the best of humanity. The terrorists truly did represent all that encompasses the worst of humanity.

I’m going to be honest- before 9/11, I really didn’t like New York City. I grew up going there, even as a kid. It was big. There really wasn’t that much for me to do as a kid. There was traffic. My family liked going there for stuff that I really didn’t love at the time. I hate all of their sports teams. If I’m even more honest, I found a distaste for Washington, D.C. as a young adult that took me until years later to get over. Today they are two of my favorite places to go. One of the things that 9/11 made me realize though is that to billions of people around the globe, New York and Washington are quite literally the most recognizable symbols of the United States, and possibly the Western World. I am incredibly lucky to live within a driving distance of either. Part of the reason that cowardly bastards who join petty terrorist organizations wanted to harm them is because they represent the best of us in many, many ways.

That’s the other point that I think needs to be made here. Literally only people from these places could have endured these attacks and dusted themselves off and moved forward. They are resilient people. They’re fighters. For all of the mud that gets thrown at some of our biggest cities, I think it’s important that we remember, these people are tough. Real tough. And proud. And after 9/11, they the victims were the example for the rest of us on how to move forward. If you grew up or lived in the area that I lived in, you remarked for years how every town along I-78 from the city out here to Eastern Pennsylvania had flags on the overpasses and memorials to remember their residents who died in the attacks. It was literally every single one.

I think it’s important to also give Shanksville their props too. The tiny Somerset County town and it’s surrounding areas were not ready for Flight 93 to crash there that day. No one was. They rebuilt though, and built a beautiful memorial to the victims. Their Western Pennsylvania grit got put on full display.

As I said, this is all just history now. George W. Bush is a private citizen living in the Dallas area, and the “Bush dynasty” in politics is over. Osama Bin Laden is dead, and I have to say that celebrating his death outside of the White House was enjoyable and well deserved. There are millions of voting aged Americans who have no recollection of 9/11 or were not alive. It is simply a part of the history books now.

It’s up to us to tell that story now. For the sake of history, we all should. We are all the primary sources of how we experienced that day, and the days that followed. I hope we never forget that.

Remembering 9/11/2001

/ Rich Wilkins / 1 Comment

From the UVA Miller Center, the chronology of the events of 9/11.

September 11, 2001

5:45 AM – Mohamed Atta and Abdul Aziz al-Omari, two of the intended hijackers, pass through security at the Portland International Jetport in Maine. They board a commuter flight to Boston Logan International Airport, they then board American Airlines Flight 11.

7:59 AM – Flight 11 takes off from Boston, headed for Los Angeles, California. There are 76 passengers, 11 crew members, and 5 hijackers on board.

8:15 AM – United Airlines Flight 175 takes off from Boston, also headed for Los Angeles. There are 51 passengers, 9 crew members, and 5 hijackers on board.

8:19 AM – A flight attendant on Flight 11, Betty Ann Ong, alerts ground personnel that a hijacking is underway and that the cockpit is unreachable.

8:20 AM – American Airlines Flight 77 takes off from Dulles, outside of Washington, DC, headed for Los Angeles. There are 53 passengers, 6 crew members, and 5 hijackers on board.

8:24 AM – Mohamed Atta, a hijacker on Flight 11, unintentionally alerts air controllers in Boston to the attack. He meant to press the button that allowed him to talk to the passengers on his flight.

8:37 AM – After hearing the broadcast from Atta on Flight 11, Boston air traffic control alerts the US Air Force’s Northeast Defense Sector, who then mobilize the Air National Guard to follow the plane.

8:42 AM – United Flight 93 takes off from Newark, New Jersey, after a delay due to routine traffic. It was headed for San Francisco, California. There are 33 passengers, 7 crew members, and 4 hijackers are on board.

8:46 AM – Flight 11 crashes into the World Trade Center’s North Tower. All passengers aboard are instantly killed, and employees of the WTC are trapped above the 91st floor.

9:03 AM – Flight 175 crashes into the WTC’s South Tower. All passengers aboard are killed instantly and so are an unknown number of people in the tower.

9:05 AM – President George W. Bush, in an elementary school classroom in Florida, is informed about the hit on the second tower. His chief of staff, Andrew Card, whispers the chilling news into the president’s ear. Bush later wrote about his response: “I made the decision not to jump up immediately and leave the classroom. I didn’t want to rattle the kids. I wanted to project a sense of calm… I had been in enough crises to know that the first thing the leader has to do is to project calm.” (Miller Center)

9:28 AM – Hijackers attack on Flight 93.

9:37 AM – Flight 77 crashes into the Pentagon. All passengers aboard are instantly killed and so are 125 civilian and military personnel in the building.

9:45 AM – US airspace is shut down under Operation Yellow Ribbon. All civilian aircraft are ordered to land at the nearest airport.

9:55 AM – Air Force One with President George W. Bush aboard takes off from Florida.

9:57 AM – Passengers aboard Flight 93 begin to run up toward the cockpit. Jarrah, the pilot, begins to roll the plane back and forth in an attempt to destabilize the revolt.

9:59 AM – The South Tower of the World Trade Center collapses.

10:02 AM – Flight 93 plows into an empty field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Although its ultimate target is unknown, it was likely heading for either the White House or the US Capitol.

10:18 AM – President Bush authorizes any non-grounded planes to be shot down. At that time, all four hijacked planes had already crashed but the president’s team was operating under the impression that Flight 93 was still in the air.

10:28 AM – The North Tower of the World Trade Center collapses.

10:53 AM – Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld orders the US military to move to a higher state of alert, going to DEFCON 3.

11:45 AM – Air Force 1 lands at Barksdale Air Force Base near Shreveport, Louisiana.

12:15 PM – Airspace in the United States is completely free of all commercial and private flights.

1:30 PM – Air Force 1 leaves Barksdale.

2:30 PM – Rudy Giuliani, the mayor of New York City, visits the fallen Twin Towers of the World Trade Center at what becomes known as Ground Zero.

3:00 PM – Air Force 1 lands at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, and President Bush is immediately taken to a secure bunker that is capable of withstanding a nuclear attack.

4:30 PM – Air Force 1 leaves Offutt and heads back toward Andrews Air Force base near Washington, DC.

5:30 PM – Building 7 of the World Trade Center collapses.

8:30 PM – President Bush addresses the nation.

Thank You, Dr. Rokke

/ Rich Wilkins / 1 Comment

Sometimes you meet someone at exactly the right time. They’re only going to be around for a minute, but they’re going to make a big impact on you. They’ll teach you things. They’ll bring you forward as a person. They change your trajectory.

I was not exactly a great student in my time at Moravian College. I had other priorities, we’ll say. If the class wasn’t something I knew I was interested in, I was only going to do enough to get by. Campaigns, partying, and being young were my priorities. This isn’t to say I was unsuccessful. I just didn’t care about my grades. I was class Vice-President, wrote for the school newspaper, and lead a couple clubs. I was just problematic, wild, and for a while, totally unfocused.

Fortunately, the President of Moravian College was a guy named Erv Rokke. Wikipedia says of Dr. Rokke:

Ervin J. Rokke (December 12, 1939 – September 5, 2025) was a lieutenant general and President of Moravian College. He was a United States Air Force lieutenant general and president of the National Defense University.[1] During the 1980’s, as a Brigadier General in the United States Air Force, General Rokke served as the Dean of Faculty at the United States Air Force Academy.

That’s a very vanilla version of his career. But it’s the important public facing parts. Moravian goes further in depth:

According to an announcement from the U.S. Air Force Academy, Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Ervin J. Rokke was a distinguished alumnus of the U.S. Air Force Academy Class of 1962 and former Dean of the Faculty at the Academy. He furthered his education at Harvard University, earning both a master’s and a doctorate in international relations. His military career spanned 35 years, during which he held pivotal roles such as Dean of Faculty at the U.S. Air Force Academy, U.S. Air and Defense Attaché to the Soviet Union, Director of Intelligence at U.S. European Command, and President of the National Defense University.

Fortunately, he took an interest in me as a student, as did his right-hand man, a fellow retired military man named Mike Seidl. They regularly invited me to the President’s office and talked politics, the world, and my shitty grades with me. They got through to me, my senior year was a bit better, and I graduated. The quality of my education was wildly enhanced listening to people who had seen the world and lived it for real telling me about it. My professors taught me the nuts and bolts. These two guys really enhanced my thinking. I guess all that time in some of the hot spots of the globe gave them a perspective a kid from Easton didn’t have.

When I graduated in 2006, they both left town too. Dr. Rokke retired to Colorado. According to LinkedIn, so did Mike. For how much I love the west, that’s probably a good choice. I never saw them after my college years. I went on to work for a couple of Presidents, Senators, Governors, Congressmen, and State Legislators. I didn’t get rich, but damn was it a great ride. I had the most enriching, interesting career I think anyone could ever hope for. I never would have done it without them.

Rest easy, Dr. Rokke. Thanks for everything.

NFL Power Rankings, 9/9

/ Rich Wilkins / 17 Comments

Week one is complete. This is probably way too early to rank the teams, but I did anyway. I put them in originalNFL draft order to start, then adjusted based on wins and losses, who they played, and how it looked. With all of that in mind, here’s my rankings from #1-32 in the NFL after week one.

  1. Philadelphia Eagles
  2. Buffalo Bills
  3. Los Angeles Rams
  4. Washington Commanders
  5. Los Angeles Chargers
  6. Kansas City Chiefs
  7. Green Bay Packers
  8. Baltimore Ravens
  9. Minnesota Vikings
  10. Tampa Bay Buccaneers
  11. Denver Broncos
  12. Houston Texans
  13. Cincinnati Bengals
  14. Pittsburgh Steelers
  15. Detroit Lions
  16. Indianapolis Colts
  17. San Francisco 49’ers
  18. Seattle Seahawks
  19. Chicago Bears
  20. Atlanta Falcons
  21. New York Jets
  22. Arizona Cardinals
  23. Dallas Cowboys
  24. Las Vegas Raiders
  25. Jacksonville Jaguars
  26. Cleveland Browns
  27. New England Patriots
  28. Tennessee Titans
  29. New Orleans Saints
  30. Carolina Panthers
  31. Miami Dolphins
  32. New York Giants

Was I too hard on some teams? Yes. My feeling was some losses showed us a lot about the team losing. Some wins really didn’t inspire me a ton yet either. I need to see more from teams like the Jags, Raiders, and Cardinals, and found myself less impressed with them, than say the Jets. Is that likely to change? Yes. There are 17 more weeks of regular season football. This will move a lot.

Bob “Crooksy” Brooks- the Poor Man’s Broken Version of John Fetterman

/ Rich Wilkins / 9 Comments

I remember the 2022 primary very well. A bunch of leftists in Philly and Pittsburgh running around Pennsylvania telling us that John Fetterman was exactly what we needed. He was going to be a fighter, for us. We needed an “authentic, blue collar fighter.” Pennsylvanians were dying for this guy that “doesn’t look like a politician.” The fact that all of the insiders were endorsing Conor Lamb and not siding with Fetterman was only more proof that he was who we needed now. Many of us raised questions. Even some of his opponents raised questions about what kind of guy he was. The progressive network in the big cities knew best though. I hated that he was our nominee, but eventually I voted for him, mostly because I think Dr. Oz is a jackass. There are days I really wish I had left that line blank.

I don’t mind that Fetterman is moderate, or that he supports Israel. I do too, to some extent. I mind that he was a fraud. He sold himself as some leftist/progressive champion, a blue collar guy from Braddock. He was no champion of the left, and he’s realistically just a trust fund kid that picked a tough blue collar town to launch his career in. It was a complete bait and switch. He wasn’t lying to me, I knew he wasn’t good. I still don’t like that he hoodwinked other people.

Well, meet Bob Brooks, now a candidate for PA-7’s Democratic nomination to Congress. Bob Brooks wants you to know that the Democratic Party forgot how to talk to working class people before he came along. Sound familiar? Yes, watch the Fetterman commercial above. It’s the same damn message, verbatim. That’s not shocking. Brooksy is literally using the same team that created the Fetterman myth. They want you to believe that he’ll come along and be different. Brooks, like Fetterman, will be a working class hero who fights for the little guy. Brooks, like Fetterman, is endorsed by Bernie Sanders. He even has the tacit Harrisburg insider support that Fetterman had when he was sitting Lt. Governor. If you just took Brooksy out of his own ads and had John Fetterman do them, there would be no skipping a beat. They both even tell you about how the steel mills left their towns (Brooks had no steel mills in his actual neighborhood). Similarly, neither actually ever did anything about it for those steelworkers, unlike opponents of their’s. Hell, Fetterman chased a black guy down the street with a shot gun because he thought he was shooting a gun- Brooksy probably agreed, he’s right with the 3%’ers on arming everyone. John Fetterman and Bob Brooks are basically the same guy, minus well…

You might be saying to yourself, “okay Rich, but Fetterman won his race.” Yes, he did, and at least for two years that was helpful on some basic level. The main difference is that John Fetterman didn’t stiff his former mother-in-law for $55k. Crooksy? Yeah, he did. Yeah, he never paid it back either. Look, it only took a few internet clicks to find. If I could do that, what will the NRCC and their allies do to defend a seat they paid tens of millions of dollars for? By the time it’s Labor Day in 2026, they will have portrayed him as the symbol of elder abuse and fraud in America. Hell, they’ll probably say he took the $55k to Wind Creek and gambled it all away while he was supposed to be on the clock working. Is it fair? Probably not. They’ll embellish the actual shitty thing he did and make it a new inquisition. Sure, Fetterman was a mess by the Fall of 2022, but he was running against a quack who made a fool of himself every time he spoke. Mackenzie just won’t speak. Problem solved for them. The Republican media machine will beat this guy over the head so badly with his transgressions that he’ll have to pick up and move after the race. That’s how politics are.

This is the choice that Democrats have to face on Brooks. Under the best case scenario, you get a carbon copy of the John Fetterman who mislead you on who he was and disappointed you as a Senator. These guys say the exact same things at the behest of the exact same people, even down to the talking points about “corporate pac money” and “stock trading” that neither of them is going to do shit about in Congress. And that’s the best case scenario. The worst case scenario? You’re nominating a “deadbeat” that the Republican Party will beat to death with the negatives that could be found without a Lexus Nexus account. You tell me what’s worse?

MLB Power Rankings, 9/8

/ Rich Wilkins / 5 Comments

Week One. Week Two. Week Three. Week Four.

We are now under 20 games to go for most teams. The NL Playoff picture looks almost done- the Mets lead the Reds and Giants by 4, and the Diamondbacks and Cardinals by 4.5 games with 19 left. The real drama at this point is whether the Dodgers will hold off the Padres in the NL West race. Even the home field and bye races aren’t super closer, with Milwaukee leading Philadelphia by 5.5, and Philadelphia leading Los Angeles by 4 games. The NL Cy Young should be a wrap for Paul Scenes, while the MVP really will come down to Schwarber and Ohtani, I think. The National League intrigue is minimal.

The AL picture is a freak show, where anyone .500ish is still alive, with Seattle leading Texas by 1.5, Kansas City by 2, Cleveland by 2.5, and Tampa Bay by 4 for the last spot. New York and Boston would currently meet in the Wild Card Round, but both are in range of catching Toronto, who actually has the best record still. Seattle is clinging to life in the Wild Card race, but also is only 2.5 games back to win the AL West. Things are pretty wild in the AL at this point, with 2/3 of the league still in this thing.

With that in mind, here we go with this week’s power rankings. Teams currently in the playoffs make up 1-12. From there, I’m pretty much ranking your chances to sneak in out to about 20. From 20 to 30, I’m rating if you’re worth watching right now.

  1. The Milwaukee Brewers
  2. The Philadelphia Phillies
  3. The Toronto Blue Jays
  4. The Detroit Tigers
  5. The New York Yankees
  6. The Chicago Cubs
  7. The Boston Red Sox
  8. The Houston Astros
  9. The Los Angeles Dodgers
  10. The San Diego Padres
  11. The New York Mets
  12. The Seattle Mariners
  13. The Texas Rangers
  14. The Kansas City Royals
  15. The Cleveland Guardians
  16. The San Francisco Giants
  17. The Cincinnati Reds
  18. The Tampa Bay Rays
  19. The Arizona Diamondbacks
  20. The St. Louis Cardinals
  21. The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim
  22. The Oakland Athletics
  23. The Baltimore Orioles
  24. The Miami Marlins
  25. The Minnesota Twins
  26. The Atlanta Braves
  27. The Pittsburgh Pirates
  28. The Washington Nationals
  29. The Chicago White Sox
  30. The Colorado Rockies

The Disappearing Democratic Party

/ Rich Wilkins / Leave a comment

Would you rather compete in more districts or less? More states or less? The answer is obvious. Anyone in their right mind knows the answer. You would rather compete in more places because it gives you a better chance to win majorities.

Which party is doing a better job of that? The answer is emphatically not the Democratic Party. Let’s start out by stating the obvious- there are simply less blue states than red states, and less red states in which a good Democratic candidate can compete. The map for Democrats to win elections, whether it be for President or state legislators, is tighter and tighter every time. Since President Obama’s re-election ended, more and more of the nation’s land looks red. Plenty of people respond to that with “so what, land can’t vote.” Unfortunately in a federal system, geography is actually important.

Let’s start with the Presidential map. President Obama won 27 states, a district in Nebraska, and Washington, D.C., all at least once in his two runs. Hillary Clinton won 20 states and Washington in 2016. Joe Biden did a bit better, carrying 25 states, Washington, D.C., and Nebraska’s second district in 2020. Kamala Harris only won 19 states, Washington, D.C., and Nebraska’s second in 2024. The states of Iowa, Ohio, and Florida have become red bastions. The states of Indiana and Missouri have gone from super competitive in 2008 to dead red. No Democrat has been able to pull North Carolina back in since 2008. Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin all went from narrow Democrat states from 1988 to 2012, to completely swing states that Trump has won twice. Even with the positive trends in Arizona and Georgia, the map is becoming increasingly difficult for a Democratic candidate to win. States like Texas that Democrats believed would come their way because of demographics are certainly not coming to the Democratic column soon. With current trend lines, Democrats basically will have traded Iowa, Ohio, Florida, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina from lean Dem states to somewhere between swing to red, in exchange for Virginia, Colorado, and New Mexico as blue states, and Georgia, Nevada, and Arizona as swing states, and we lost all three last year.

The Senate outlook is even more bleak. Increasingly, there aren’t Democrats winning red states or Republicans winning blue states. If you told a 20 something year old that Democrats not that long ago held both Senate seats in North Dakota, South Dakota, and Montana, they’d think you’re on crack. If you told them that Tom Harkin used to not only win Iowa, but be well liked, they’d laugh. If you told them we recently held seats in Missouri and Indiana, they’d not believe you. Florida? Ohio? No. With maybe 19 states leaning to the Democratic side, there’s just not enough in play. There are 25 states that Trump won three times, another five he won twice, and one more he won this time, so Republicans have at least 31 states to battle in. Tack on Maine, New Hampshire, and Minnesota as states he was competitive in, and you have a GOP battle field right now of about 68 Senate seats they can realistically win. At best, the Democrats look like they could pull off 25 states, so they can maybe put 50 states on the board. If Ohio, Florida, and Iowa don’t look any better in 2026, they may literally need to run the table every election to control the Senate moving forward.

Governor races are slightly better- every once in a while you see someone win in a state they shouldn’t, from both sides. Even so, the re-districting battle that is playing out right now is probably not going to help that. In fact, with the outsized role cultural and public health fights in the states are starting to play in our politics, it could become harder and harder to get elected as a Governor in a state where the other party is the dominant political party.

And of course, this gets me to legislative races. Yes, the House of Representatives has been fairly competitive in recent years. Here’s the ugly reality though- The GOP has controlled the House for 17 of the first 25 years. Here in Pennsylvania, they controlled the Senate for all 25 years, and the House entirely for 18 of the last 25 years, and with a Republican Speaker for 20 of the last 25 years. This was during a period when the Voting Right’s Act protected minority representation more than it does now, and during a period where we held the White House for 12 of the 25 years. Uninhibited by the Voting Rights Act or an Executive Branch that will enforce it, the GOP is likely to win a race-to-the-bottom re-districting fight, nationally. Democrats have not faired all that well even under friendlier conditions.

What’s worse to consider is exactly how the Republicans have taken control. After President Obama’s victories, a lot of the “smart kids” inside the Beltway and in leadership positions within the party said “demographics are destiny,” and were going to kill the Republican Party as they lost the “emerging electorate.” They couldn’t have been more wrong. Trump ran a huge chunk of his 2024 campaign railing against transgender people. His supporters basically called Vice-President Kamala Harris a “DEI hire,” and impugned her intelligence. They at times accused her of sleeping her way to the top. Against both Hillary and Kamala, Trump backers raised doubts about women in leadership roles. Trump has spent his Presidency destroying DEI programs in the public and private sector, invading diverse cities with law enforcement and troops, and deporting anyone he can. Even with all that, he has made gains among minority voters. He has locked down anywhere rural in America. He has boxed Democrats into a smaller and smaller playing field.

I blame a ton of this all on the operative class in the Democratic Party, who used fancy algorithms to defend being uncompetitive at all with voters and places they didn’t really like. I also blame this to some extent on a donor class and activist that is way out of touch with what actual voters want the Democratic Party to do. So much of Barack Obama’s campaigns was not about his identity and ideology, and more so about saving jobs for blue collar folks in Michigan and Wisconsin, and it worked. This isn’t an either/or though. You can’t watch Roe v. Wade be overturned and say “we’ll ignore that, women won’t care.” Of course you have to respond to actual harm done in culture wars. Conceding all areas that aren’t culturally progressive though is a losing message. Taking positions that most people hate, like defending “intifada” or slamming Sydney Sweeney for saying she’s hot, just makes us look like weirdos. There’s really no constituency for it. Fighting about niche cultural issues has little appeal, even to people who voted for President Obama. What we should have learned from Hillary Clinton’s loss was that the combination of people who hate us on cultural issues and the people who just don’t give a shit about some of them, makes up a majority. We spent most of the last decade making our message “Donald Trump is unacceptably bad,” and a majority of people either disagreed or shrugged their shoulders.

We’re not going to live in the enlightened utopia that Democrats wish for. Running inauthentic “blue collar” messengers like John Fetterman isn’t going to appease anyone either. No, they don’t want the angry cultural leftist, but no, they also don’t want a bunch of Ivy League educated, trust funded socialists either. They can tell the difference between a blue collar guy and a deadbeat like Bernie Sanders too. They want a better deal from their government, and maybe none of that “globalize the intifada” garbage. Makes sense. None of that will change though until we change our “Democratic political industry” complex altogether. We’re just going to keep putting forward candidates who don’t relate at all.

Will Irons Primary Boscola?

/ Rich Wilkins / 1 Comment

I do hate picking up the phone, but every once in a while I do it, and hear some interesting rumors. The latest one has nothing to do with PA-7 (thank god), but instead has everything to do with the 18th State Senate District. The district is all of Northampton County besides the Northwest corner, and the portion of Bethlehem City in Lehigh County. Since 1998, that district has belonged to Senator Lisa Boscola, and she generally wins by a lot. For most of the last six decades (58 years), the seat has either been held by Jeanette Reibman or Boscola. It has been competitive like once in my lifetime, when Joe Uliana won the seat by like 2 votes over Bob Freeman, entirely because of the 1994 Republican wave. Otherwise it’s basically been the two Democratic women beating the bejesus out of whoever runs against them.

Senator Boscola isn’t a big favorite of progressive activists, but she has been highly effective at securing resources for the communities in her district. Her moderate tendencies make her very hard to beat in a general election that is centered in heavily moderate Northampton County. Reportedly though she has finally ruffled enough feathers to draw fire from her left. Lehigh County Commissioner at-large Jon Irons is reportedly considering primarying Boscola in 2026. Irons has been a favorite of the progressive community, and reportedly there are people encouraging him. Irons was born in Ecuador, raised in suburban Chicago, and moved here when his wife took a job at Lehigh, about a decade ago. From his website, he tells us “what he cares about and loves:”

Outside of work, I have been a committed volunteer with a number of social justice organizations. I have collected signatures in support of inclusionary zoning in Allentown, hosted city council debates, and volunteered for a number of political campaigns including Greg Edwards for Congress in 2018. Most recently, I have served as a member-leader with Lehigh Valley Stands Up where we have supported candidates for local office, organized ballot initiatives in Lehigh County and Allentown, and built a restorative, relational organizing community of working class resident’s committed to change through building political power.

I am also an avid photographer, bird watcher, and musician. I enjoy hiking in the many parks and trails throughout the county. I bike the D&L trail north and south, and I walk my dog, Dingo, every day in our West Bethlehem neighborhood. The Lehigh Valley has so much to offer, and I’ve enjoyed building and working for my community in every way I can to make a caring, empathetic, connected, and sustainable world.

Anyone is welcome to run for any office they want. From my vantage point though, the map is not in his favor here. For one, he is way, way behind in name recognition in this district, because he has only represented the West Bethlehem voters. The other thing I see here is that he represents a considerably more progressive county than Northampton, and some of his past positions would be a very hard sell to that electorate. In particular, I think his positions on immigration and crime would probably be under water in the primary, let alone a general election in Northampton County. On the flip side, if the primary electorate is feeling positive about Carol Obando-Derstine in the Congressional primary, they have very similar stories as immigrants, highly educated people, and progressives. The biggest problem here? Money. The general public likes Senator Boscola. Not only would Irons, or anyone else, need to introduce themselves and build up some name recognition with voters who don’t know them, they also would have to change the public’s mind about Boscola. In the past I’ve told people who bring this up that they would need $600k if Boscola doesn’t decide to spend against them, just to compete. I’ve got news though- Senator Boscola would absolutely spend to get her message out. That probably means it would take north of a million bucks to have a chance. I don’t see that money coming in the Lehigh Valley.