In January, at what will almost certainly be a fever-pitch moment in our national political battles, Pennsylvania will swear in a new Attorney General. It is crucial for the Commonwealth, and for the country, that this person be a different kind of Attorney General, one of independent character and affiliation, and not just another player for either the red or blue team.
Regardless of who wins the presidential election, both in Pennsylvania and nationally, it is very likely that come January, we will have about half the country vehemently, and even perhaps violently, opposed to the next president.
If Trump and the Republicans win, both the White House and potentially PA’s State House, Democrats are going to see everything that happens as a step toward implementing a Project 2025 authoritarian agenda.
If Harris and the Democrats win, Trump and the GOP will claim fraud and yet another deep state coup and very likely try to “defend democracy” by even more violent and sustained ways than we witnessed on Jan 6, 2021.
It is simply crucial that Pennsylvania’s chief legal and law enforcement officer stand above this fray, stand on behalf ONLY of the law and people of the Commonwealth, not being a tool of either party.
But if we elect either the Republican or Democratic candidates—and I do not argue that they are anything other than fine public servants—they will necessarily join with attorneys general of their party from around the country on one side or the other of these struggles.
That is not what the office should be, and it is not what the voters want in their Attorney General.
As the Forward Party candidate for AG, I’m offering this essential new option for Pennsylvania’s voters when they cast their ballots, 70 or fewer days from this posting. I offer a new option for how to best govern our Commonwealth in the years ahead—with civility and compromise, not vitriol. Pennsylvanians are better than that.
15% of Pennsylvanians are registered outside the Republican and Democratic parties—despite the fact that Pennsylvania’s archaic election laws exclude this large portion of our population from participating in the taxpayer-funded primary elections. It’s not unreasonable to believe that many more Pennsylvanians—maybe as many as the 51% of Americans nationally who call themselves independents—would wish to register as neither a Republican nor a Democrat if not for this exclusionary system.
Dr. Pepper just surpassed Pepsi as America’s second-largest-selling soda. Americans don’t let “Coke versus Pepsi”, “Ford versus Chevy” duopolistic choices reign forever. Part of always striving for a more perfect Union is to self-correct whenever too much power concentrates in too few hands for too many years, and to instead create new and better choices.
If just 2% of PA’s voters on November 5 vote for the new option Forward is offering—an experienced attorney with that experience at the highest levels of state government and the private sector, a former moderate (Tom Ridge, Arlen Specter, pro-choice) Republican, who successfully fought to help children with autism—it will send a powerful message that the top lawyer in state government should be a neutral umpire, calling balls and strikes in a gray uniform, not purporting to be a neutral referee while wearing the jersey of one of the two teams on the field.
And those voters will also change the game itself going forward into the elections in ‘25 and ‘26—for Philly DA and then for Governor and countless vital local offices across the Commonwealth—by giving the Forward Party (with its bipartisan national leadership of former (D) Andrew Yang and former (R) Christie Todd Whitman) official minor party status under PA election law. And that will give more and better voices and choices and future candidates the ability to run for office as Forwardists and be up for consideration for the votes of all Pennsylvanians in future elections.
Not Left. Not Right. Forward.
Eric Settle – Forward Candidate for Pennsylvania Attorney General