Pa. election 2025: What Delaware County voters need to know about the council race

What questions do you have about the 2025 elections? What major issues do you want candidates to address? Let us know.

A five-member council handles all administrative and legislative duties for Delaware County.

The Home Rule Charter grants Delaware County Council the authority to adopt budgets, pass ordinances and hire personnel to lead county departments.

But unlike other neighboring counties, Delaware County does not require minority party representation on the council. This quirk in governance along with Delaware County’s history of machine politics has led to lengthy stretches of single-party dominance.

More than 150 years of Republican rule began to falter in 2017 when Democrats Kevin Madden and Brian Zidek scored two seats on the council. Candidates Monica Taylor, Christine Reuther and Eliane Paul Schaefer won the remaining three seats in 2019. Democrats have maintained sole control of the council ever since.

Two council seats are up for election in Pennsylvania’s November 2025 election. Republicans have rallied around challengers Brian Burke and Liz Piazza. Burke previously served on Upper Darby Township Council and Piazza is a former county employee.

Incumbent Democrat Richard Womack is running again. Madden has reached the end of his second four-year term and cannot run for re-election, clearing the way for county Controller Joanne Phillips to join as Womack’s running mate.

Republican Brian Burke

Brian Burke, 59, is originally from Lansdowne. He later moved to Drexel Hill where he got married and started a family. Burke is 41-year member of the Local Steamfitters 420 union and is active within St. Dorothy Parish.

His father was the first Democrat to ever be elected to Lansdowne Borough Council in 1976. He then came back in 1992 and served as the only Republican on Lansdowne’s council.

“Politics is in my blood,” Burke said.

In 2019, Burke successfully ran for Upper Darby Township Council as a Democrat just as the party began to rewind decades of Republican majority-control. A feud over American Rescue Plan Act funding drove a wedge between council members.

Burke, who was council president, accused the administration of misusing millions of federal COVID-19 recovery dollars and sided with two Democrats and three Republicans against then-Mayor Barberann Keffer and five Democrats.

The local Democratic Party pledged to ensure Burke and the two other council members “do not hold elected office as Democrats again” in the township, citing their role in “obstructing” township business.

Burke then switched parties.

He credited himself for bringing a township parking scandal to light. In 2023, he launched an unsuccessful bid for mayor in Upper Darby as a Republican. Burke said he’s learned to ask the hard questions.

“You need to hold everybody accountable and I think I was held accountable for the four years in Upper Darby and I hope Delaware County, if elected, they hold me accountable every day of a four-year term,” Burke said.

He slammed Delaware County Council for establishing a health department, deprivatizing the George W. Hill Correctional Facility and spending more money on outside legal counsel. He believes those actions have contributed to an increased burden on taxpayers.

“Things need to change,” Burke said. “We need to stop spending.”

If elected, Burke said he wants to reel in spending and root out “mismanagement.”

“If I go in line in a supermarket, fill my basket and I only have $100, is that checker going to let me go, if I have $240 worth of groceries? No,” Burke said. “So why should we allow county council to do what they’ve been doing for the last four years — and why should we let them continue to do this?”

Republican Liz Piazza

Born and raised in Newtown Square, Liz Piazza, 65, attended Marple Newtown High School. She earned a bachelor’s degree in paralegal studies from Widener Law School.

Piazza spent the earlier part of her career as a paralegal for private attorneys in Media while raising her children as a single mom. In 2001, she got hired by the Delaware County Department of Domestic Relations to be a case worker. Piazza was later promoted to be a supervisor.

“I was on the management team running the warrant division, seizing and freezing of bank accounts for noncustodial parents not paying their child support and interacted with all the attorneys in Media,” Piazza said. “I was kind of like their liaison [and] the judge’s liaison.”

She also spent time as an adjunct professor at Delaware County Community College. She retired in 2021.

“When I retired, my son wanted me to come work for one of his companies,” Piazza said. “So I run one of his companies, which is a small business, and I’ve been doing that for four years.”

Over the years, Piazza said she’s learned to act as a mediator in “hectic” environments. She has wanted to put the skills to use as an elected official. In 2024, Piazza ran a campaign to unseat state Rep. Jennifer O’Mara, D-Delaware County. Although she was ultimately unsuccessful, Piazza said her desire to be a “common sense leader” remains.

“Government should be about serving the people and being honest and open and efficient for what you’re there for,” Piazza said. “You’re the people’s voice and I listen to a lot of people, whether they’re Republican or Democrat. I knock on doors and talk to everybody.”

She questioned the creation of the Delaware County Health Department and the financial investment into George W. Hill Correctional Facility. However, she said council members have a “tough job” balancing the needs of the county and the needs of a taxpayer.

If elected, she said wanted to bring her experience working alongside the Delaware County Court of Common Pleas to oversee the county prison.

“You have lawsuits,” Piazza said. “You have drugs coming into the prison. We just had the warden resign. There’s a lot of issues out there and I think I could help in that way, somehow or another.”

She also wants to refocus how the county spends its allocation of opioid settlement dollars.

“I’m a grandmom raising grandchildren because of the opioid epidemic for the last 10 years,” Piazza said. “And it’s always taken a big toll on my mind about all the grandparents that need help too.”

Democrat Richard Womack

Richard Womack, 64, is from Darby Township.

“I basically grew up in a labor movement family — father is a civil rights leader, mother being a minister,” Womack said. “So I have the best of both worlds.”

He studied political science at Mansfield State College and later attended the National Labor College. Womack started off as an organizer for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union, or AFSCME, in Washington, D.C. When his father retired from the civil rights division of the national AFL-CIO, Womack followed in his footsteps.

Womack began as a civil rights director before working his way up the chain to become an assistant to the president of the AFL-CIO. Back in Darby, Womack ran for office.

“I decided to use my experiences from the AFL-CIO working in the civil rights department, which had allowed me to travel around the country and learn different things, and use my expertise,” Womack said. “I thought I would try to take that same scenario and use it here in Darby Township to try to help make a difference.”

From 2009 to 2021, Womack served on the Darby Township Board of Commissioners. He was eventually elected president of the board despite Republicans holding a majority — which Womack believes is a testament to his ability to work across the aisle. He was elected to Delaware County Council in 2021.

“There were some communities that have been overlooked for many, many years and I wanted to try to make the playing field a lot [more] even,” Womack said.

Womack began his term as several historical changes were already beginning to take place: the soft-launched the county Health Department and the deprivatization of the county prison. Prior to 2022, Delaware County was the largest county in the United States without a health department.

He said Republicans had left the county facing the side effects of decades of disinvestment. Going years without raising taxes came back to haunt Delaware County residents, Womack said.

“When you have a house, if you don’t maintain that house, it crumbles and costs you a lot more in the end,” he said. “So that’s kind of where we’re at with that.”

If elected to a second term, Womack wants to help bring in health care providers to fill the void left by Crozer Health and establish more programs at the George W. Hill Correctional Facility.

“I don’t look at myself as a politician,” Womack said. “I look at myself as a servant for the people. All I have done all my life was to serve the people to try to make their lives better and that’s what I want to continue to do.”

Democrat Joanne Phillips

Joanne Phillips, 67, grew up in Warminster and attended William Tennent High School. She later went to play field hockey at Ursinus College, where she earned her bachelor’s degree in English literature.

Phillips graduated as class valedictorian from Widener University Delaware Law School. She started off as an associate at the Ballard Spahr law firm before working her way up to become a partner.

During her career, she held a stint as the special assistant to the managing director under Philadelphia Mayor John Street’s administration. She also worked as the director of the Bureau of Real Estate under the Pennsylvania Department of General Services.

Phillips, who now lives in Middletown Township, got the idea to run for elected office in 2017 during President Donald Trump’s first term.

“I went to the Women’s March in Washington, D.C., and I heard the call that we needed to run for office and I had the opportunity to do it and run for controller — and I did that,” she said.

When she was sworn into office in 2018 with the first group of Democrats, Phillips said she was left without an instruction manual.

“What I found was that they didn’t leave me a lot of paperwork or background or processes, and I was really on my own to figure out almost everything,” Phillips said, crediting the public servants in the office who stayed from the previous administration.

Phillips said she had to make it work in order to stay accountable to the taxpayers. She gave up her partnership from Ballard Spahr and eventually retired from the firm in 2024.

“The biggest accomplishment, I think, is turning that office into an integral part of the financial operations of the county and keeping the back office running smoothly and efficiently for a government that came into transition,” she said.

A breast cancer survivor, Phillips said having a county health department is “common sense.” Phillips defended the deprivatization of the county prison — which at the time was the only privately managed county prison in Pennsylvania. She said she played a crucial role in the transition.

“Instead of putting $3 million or more into some CEO’s pocket, we put the money back into our people, including our corrections officers who got more of a living wage,” she said.

The county doesn’t have a spending issue, according to Phillips, it has a revenue issue — one that she believes can be fixed by bringing “sensible development” to the region.

“I think there’s a real opportunity in just attracting businesses to Delaware County because of our location and our strong, strong labor workforce and the hard working people that are here,” Phillips said. “So, that’s really where I’d like to go. I’d like to expand the tax base so that we can, you know, mitigate tax increases.”