Candidates zero in on Montco's swell of Democrats
Because of redistricting, Democratic voters will have a say in choosing 41 delegates. It's not solid GOP anymore.
In suburban Montgomery County, a vestige of the bitterly partisan redistricting fight earlier this decade has created a primary-season oddity.
The suburbs' most populous county was left with six congressional districts in the 2002 reapportionment to protect Republican interests - which means, because of Democratic primary rules that award 103 of the state's pledged delegates by congressional district, Montgomery County voters will have a hand in picking 41 of those delegates, more than any other county.
That does not mean, however, that the county has become Pennsylvania's kingmaker. County voters have little muscle in most of the congressional districts that lap over its borders - only in one is the Montgomery County electorate a solid majority - so its 225,000 or so registered Democrats cannot brag that they carry more weight than Philadelphia Democrats, which will have a hand in picking 30 district-level delegates in three Philadelphia-dominated districts.
Yet the county's location at the intersection of six districts now makes it a place where different strands of this heated primary season intertwine to a degree unanticipated by the people who drew the borders.
"None of us really considered delegates to the national conventions at the time the lines were drawn," said Montgomery County Commissioner Bruce L. Castor Jr., a Republican.
Back in 2000, Montgomery County was in a nascent stage of the political evolution expected to make it almost evenly split between Republican and Democratic registrations by this fall. As of late February, Republicans had 6,000 more voters than Democrats, with more than one million people registered to the two parties.
The whittling into six districts was thought at the time to protect Republican political interests, but four of those districts now have Democratic members of Congress. The demographics of the county run the gamut, further making it a touchstone for candidates.
"Montgomery County is a microcosm of all of Pennsylvania," Castor said. "It has urban centers and it has rural areas, so the candidate from either party that can do well in Montgomery County can do well across much of the state."
Veteran Democratic consultant Neil Oxman, who is unaffiliated in the presidential primary, predicted that coming weeks would see Montgomery County at the forefront of "just a ton of activity in the four suburban counties" by Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, with each trying to capitalize on rising Democratic fortunes in what was once a wasteland for their party.
"You won Philadelphia, then you'd sort of hold on for dear life in the rest of the state," Oxman said of bygone Democratic efforts.
Former U.S. Rep. Joseph M. Hoeffel, now vice chairman of the Montgomery County commissioners, said the burgeoning Democratic vote in the county is strong enough to merit targeted efforts such as Michelle Obama's visit last week.
"They're almost the same as the city districts now," Hoeffel, a Democrat who has endorsed Clinton, said of the relative density of Montgomery County Democrats in some precincts.