Socialist Demons

It was just a small election for a supervisor seat in a suburban Pennsylvania township. But what happened in Towamencin Township almost three years ago was a harbinger for right now.

I spent time following a young man named Kofi Osei before he ever decided to run for the seat as part of my reporting for The Mayor, which will be published December 1 and is now available for pre-order. At the time we first met, Osei was trying to get the township to stop the sale of the local sewer system to a big utility. He wanted it to stay in public hands.

Osei was well known in Towamencin. A tall, handsome young man, he coached soccer for local kids. His parents, immigrants from Ghana, had professional jobs, as did Osei, working in the insurance industry. He'd never considered running for anything, which was probably good because Osei hated giving interviews, was uncomfortable drawing attention to himself, and chose a career in mathematics because he figured that he could do calculations and analysis all day and wouldn't have to interact with too many people.

He'd also spent time living in Philadelphia where he joined a local Democratic Socialists of America chapter. Towamencin was mostly white, conservative in the old school, pre-Trumpian suburban sense (though Trumpian elements had gained a foothold), and had been governed by a small group of all-white supervisors who routinely won re-election. There was no way Osei would ever win election to anything in Towamencin even if he were foolish enough to run.

A few people voiced opposition to the sewer sale, but not many spoke up and there wasn't much organized resistance to the idea. Instead, many shrugged and seemed willing to acquiesce. Osei thought the sale was wrong and wanted to do something about it. So he not only spearheaded a campaign to reverse the sale plans, he spearheaded a campaign to adopt a home rule charter that prohibited privatization. To say that the campaign was "scrappy" is an understatement. Here's Osei's car from those days.

Along the way, Osei applied all of his research and analytical skills to educate himself about sewers, water systems, the legalities of charters under Pennsylvania state law, election law.

The voters of the township voted to adopt the charter and Osei received many pats on the back for all the work he'd done. That was when he thought of running for office. Still, there seemed to be no way he could possibly win.

But on a day when I walked with Osei while he door-knocked amid the upscale tracts of his community, I realized that he had a shot. Registered Republicans told me they were going to vote for him. Democrats told me they were going to vote for him. So did independents.

Local Republicans tried to scare the bejesus out of the electorate by demonizing Osei as a socialist. The accusation was true, of course. Osei was indeed a socialist of the Democratic Socialist variety – we have some serious definitional problems around "socialist" and "socialism" in this country – but what I was hearing wasn't fright. If keeping their sewer system in public hands was socialism, then they wanted some socialism, thanks.

They didn't care about the DSA membership. In fact, if a DSA membership had sparked Osei's desire to be politically involved, and to oppose the sale of the sewer system to a corporation, well, then, by god, good for him, because if it hadn't been for Osei, the public system might have been sold to private capital, and to a lot of the people in Towamencin, that just seemed wrong, somehow.

The "socialist" label just didn't mean much, any more than it meant much to the people of Milwaukee who had a socialist mayor for more than two decades, or of Cleveland who voted for Tom Johnson, himself a capitalist and industrialist who wound up advocating for public ownership of street cars and utilities and who is the reason Cleveland still enjoys public power today. The people who voted for Mamdani in New York, or, ten days ago, Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed in Michigan wanted problems solved and thought these men could help solve them. The people in Towamencin had a problem, saw that Osei wanted to solve it, worked hard to solve it, and so many shrugged off the scary labeling. What mattered was what Osei did and what he stood for, the very tangible, and practical, change he won for Towamencin.

The election ended in a tie vote. Osei and his opponent drew lots and Osei drew the winning tile. He now sits on the Towamencin Board of Supervisors.

The board eventually rescinded the sewer sale.