Josh Shapiro and Leslie Richards

A targeted get-out-the-vote effort in Democratic strongholds appears to be one of the primary factors in the historic victory Tuesday by Montgomery County Democrats in winning control of the three-member board of commissioners.

The Republican commissioner candidates, incumbent Bruce L. Castor Jr. and Lower Merion Commissioner Jenny Brown, on Tuesday were the two top vote-getters in 43 of the county’s 62 municipalities. State Rep. Josh Shapiro and Whitemarsh Supervisor Leslie Richards, the two Democrats, came out on top in 15 municipalities while the vote was split among the four candidates in four other municipalities.

However, it was the margin of victory in those 15 municipalities that boosted the two Democrats over their Republican counterparts, giving control of county government to the Democrats for the first time in 140 years.

For example, the two Democrats won by about 5,000-vote margins in the heavily Democratic municipalities of Abington, Cheltenham and even Brown’s home municipality of Lower Merion.

“We knew we had to have a large voter turnout in those communities,” said Richards, a 44-year-old senior project manager for a civil engineering firm. “Josh is from Abington and people know us in those areas.”

Rather than discuss a targeted turnout effort, Richards said their victory can be attributed to the thousands of volunteers who worked in their behalf, whether it was joining them in knocking on more than 100,000 doors, making “tens of thousands” of phone calls, sending thousands of emails and even just getting family and friends to support them.

While Republicans may have won more municipalities, their victory margins were often less than the registration ratios because of this massive volunteer effort, according to Richards.

Richards also noted that she and Shapiro, who has served in the state House for seven years, “reached out” to as many voters as they could by knocking on doors, attending small gatherings in living rooms, visiting with commuters at train station and shoppers at supermarkets and attending community events.

“Both Josh and I have a record of reaching across party lines and addressing issues and I think that resonated with many of the voters with whom we had contact,” said Richards.

County Democratic Chairman Marcel L. Groen said he believed that the public was fed up with the ongoing bickering among the three commissioners in the current administration.

“People can see (Shapiro and Richards) get along well together,” said Groen.

While many had expected Shapiro to win, the real surprise was that Richards finished a strong second, almost 9,350 votes ahead of Castor, who served as the county’s district attorney for eight years prior to winning his first four-year term as commissioner in 2007. Many had thought it would come down to a battle between Richards and Brown for the third seat.

Democratic campaign aide Frank X. Custer Jr. said that the campaign, in its electronic advertising and campaign mailers, repeatedly emphasized that voters had two votes to cast in the election and that they should use those votes for the like-minded Democratic pair.

In a press conference called by Castor and Brown Wednesday to discuss the election results, Castor said that the GOP lost its stranglehold on county government because the Democrats were better financed initially and because Democrats now hold a 36,063 edge in voter registration.

Castor said people stopped contributing to the Republican Party and its candidates during the last four years because they felt betrayed by Republican Commissioner Chairman James R. Matthews’ unprecedented power sharing pact with Democratic Commissioner Joseph M. Hoeffel III. This left Castor, Matthews’ former running mate and the top vote-getter among the commissioner candidates in the 2007 election, as the odd man out in the current administration.

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