2025 General Elections in Pennsylvania and Other American States

Tuesday, November 4 is General Election Day in Pennsylvania and in some of the other States of the American Union. On the ballot in the Keystone State, where polls are open from 7:00 AM to 8:00 PM, are statewide judicial offices, county and municipal, offices, as well as the offices of school director, magisterial district judge, and constable. Two States, New Jersey and Virginia, are electing Governors and legislators, while there are important contests elsewhere, including a redistricting ballot question in California, among others. Pennsylvanians will choose whether to retain three State Supreme Court Justices. State voters almost always vote to retain judges, but the state Republicans are campaigning against retention, to gain control of Pennsylvania’s highest court. But their justification is not conservative, and therefore, disqualifying, as they are complaining that the Justices had approved the State’s emergency public health policy of imposing reasonable restrictions because of the deadly Coronavirus 2019 Pandemic. Protecting people from contagious illness and death through reasonably limited and temporary restrictions is morally responsible and consistent with conservative beliefs about past outbreaks of contagion, such as Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome and Ebola, when they favored quarantines and restrictions on the freedom of travel, respectively, for example. Governments across America and the globe from right to left imposed similar restrictions, based upon advice from scientists and public health officials, as I have posted, starting in Italy, where the Trumpist right-wing parties first demanded closures. I have further observed that although the extraordinary restrictions were implemented by governments were late, insufficient and poorly enforced, and prematurely lifted, they did prevent many cases and deaths. But, as I posted, Donald Trump politicized the pandemic by denying and minimizing the threat, doubting and undermining public health policy and suggesting unproven and dangerous cures because of his concern about the economy. His concern was both because of his family business and his reelection and thus his protection from federal prosecution for crimes. Many of Trump’s supporters similarly doubted the public health officials, whom they baselessly thought were liberal engaged in some kind of political conspiracy, or presumptuously rejected science in favor of faith-healing, or held libertarian views such as that there is some right to spread disease during a pandemic of a deadly illness with no cure at the time, which combined to cause the contagion to spread and thus more illnesses, including long-term symptoms, and deaths. More Republicans died than Democrats because of the rejection of public health policy and vaccine hesitancy that I have also been posting about. Trumpism is a populist mix of protectionism, nativism and isolationism, none of which are conservative principles, as I often note. But the rejection of reasonable public health is another example, among others, of Trump’s lack of conservative principles and the abandonment by his supporters’ who claim to be conservatives of their own principles, or at least their exposure for also having lacked them in the first place, although it is noteworthy that some of his far-right supporters admit they oppose conservatism. Despite public support from Pennsylvanians for the Commonwealth’s public health policy during the pandemic, the Republicans successfully campaigned for referendums in the low-turnout 2021 Primary Election that limited executive power to respond to such emergencies, as the public tends to vote for referendums, unless there is organized opposition, which there was none. The Pennsylvania GOP took the vote as a validation for their opposition to reasonable public health policy. This time, however, there is some opposition to their campaign against the judicial retentions, as the Trumpist state Republicans would again take a No vote as validation for their opposition to reasonable public health policy. Therefore, although it would benefit conservatism to reject retention of the liberal Democratic Justices, doing so for the wrong reason would undermine the conservative movement. A vote of neither Yes, nor No would thus be justified for non-Trumpist conservatives, just as I advise every election not to vote either for liberal Democratic or Trumpist Republican candidates on the ballot and instead write in the names of better candidates or skip the race, as it is necessary to continue to try to restore the GOP to its center-right core, instead of acquiescing to Trumpism by trying to justify one’s vote as “the lesser of two evils,” or justifying a vote for Democrats, unless they are centrist or pro-life, as an emergency option for principled conservatives to force the Republicans to turn back to their own beliefs. Non-Trumpist conservatives or moderates should consider seeking office, whether as Republicans, non-partisan or third party candidates, or even as Democrats, instead of accepting the absence of the names of principled conservatives on the general election ballot.