Pa. election 2025: Here’s who won and who lost; full results
Democrats swept major races in Philadelphia and the suburbs, as well as statewide judicial contests.
1 day ago
People wait in line outside the Bucks County government building to apply for an on-demand mail ballot on the last day to request one in Doylestown, Pa., Tuesday, Oct. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Mike Catalini)
This story originally appeared on WESA.
A slate of Democratic candidates won four seats on the Pine-Richland school board last night and unseated one incumbent with ties to a statewide movement of conservative education leaders.
The sweep capped an Election Day marked by Democratic victories in school board races statewide.
Pine-Richland electee Randy Augustine and his peers on the Together for PR slate won over voters with slogans like “excellence over extremism.”
“School board positions are theoretically supposed to be non-partisan, non-political positions,” Augustine said. “A number of the school board members were trying to push a political agenda, focusing on culture war issues, not focusing on the students.”
The Republican-led school board initiated policies that gave board members the final say over which books were included in school libraries and challenged books with LGBTQ characters. The district’s teachers union issued a vote of no confidence in the majority of school board members this spring.
“ It was becoming toxic, and the turmoil, I think, was spreading,” said fellow Together for PR winner Melissa Vecchi. “People just wanted to see it back to boring.”
Vecchi said students also got involved in the campaign to overturn the board’s conservative majority. Pine-Richland High School seniors not yet eligible to vote wrote more than 600 letters in an effort to sway neighbors.
Defeated incumbent Christina Brussalis founded the Pennsylvania School Directors Coalition last year, which hosted conservative leaders at its trainings and billed itself as a “much-needed resource for elected school directors throughout Pennsylvania.” The group’s Facebook page hasn’t been active since April of last year.
Brussalis could not be immediately reached for comment.
The race garnered attention from Pennsylvania’s Attorney General Dave Sunday last month after charges were filed against a Wexford woman accused of forging signatures for a Republican candidate ahead of the primary election. The candidate, Kathleen Ravotti, pulled out of the race this spring.
The winning Democrats promised to lead a board “without political games, embarrassing headlines or attacks on learning.”
State Democratic party chair Eugene DePasquale said that, while many voters came to polling places angry at President Donald Trump and the Republican Party, different feelings fueled the school board upsets.
“ I think when you’re running these Moms for Liberty people, I think that changes the ballgame,” he said. “I think even Republican parents that may traditionally vote Republican don’t want those people running their school districts.”
Democrats also swept in North Allegheny’s school board races. The party won all four open seats on the district’s school board, maintaining a majority established in 2023.
North Allegheny is the second-largest school district in Allegheny County, behind Pittsburgh Public Schools.
Other swings include the overturning of a Republican board majority at Plum Borough School District, as well as a Democratic sweep in the race for Moon Area School Board.
Plum school board-electee Jill Klipa told TribLive that her win was the result of public backlash against Republican politicians both locally and nationally.
At Pittsburgh Public Schools, where five Democratic candidates ran in the general election uncontested, a slate of contenders backed by Black Women for a Better Education strengthened the PAC’s school board majority.
Elsewhere in the state, Democrats retook all seats on the Central Bucks School District’s board, which gained national attention in recent years for high-profile book bans and policies targeting LGBTQ students. Voters in the Philadelphia suburb flipped the board to majority Democratic in 2023.
Outside Harrisburg, a conservative school board president at West Shore School District was unseated by her Democratic opponent. The York County school board made headlines this year for proposing policies recommended by the Independence Law Center, a nonprofit law firm affiliated with conservative, Christian Pennsylvania Family Institute.