MyDD has the story. County Commissioner Andy Warren, the longest serving elected official in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, quit the GOP last weekend.
Okay, to many this may not sound all that interesting...I mean, who cares what some local pol in Bucks County does? As Tip O'Neill opined "all politics is local."
Bucks County is a wealthy, suburban/exurban county outside Philadelphia....the quintessential swing part of the state. Local elected officials are the closest to the reality of what is going on in their communities. He left the GOP because it's too extreme. And, he trashed the freshmen Congressman, Mike Fitzpatrick, to the local paper:
"Personally, I like Mike Fitzpatrick and believe him to be a very engaging gentleman," Warren wrote. "Politically, our philosophies are poles apart. I believe he is far more a 'DeLay disciple' than a representative of Bucks County residents."You gotta love it when GOP members of Congress are trying to run from DeLay. They own DeLay...and we can't let any of them off the hook for that.
Fitzpatrick was unavailable for comment.
His chief of staff, Mike Conallen, however, disputed that Fitzpatrick is under DeLay's thumb.
"One only has to look at his voting record to see that he has demonstrated independence," Conallen said. "Congressman Fitzpatrick has differed starkly with Majority Leader DeLay."
