HARRISBURG — In February, Lehigh County Commissioner Ron Beitler made a decision that he described as a “political suicide” — he left the GOP and chose not to affiliate with any political party.
There was no single inciting incident. Beitler has always considered himself to be politically fluid, he told Spotlight PA. While Lehigh County leans Democratic — 44% of voters are registered Democrats and 36% are registered Republicans — Beitler describes his district as “pretty Republican.” He ultimately decided that going independent would help him better communicate with constituents in his district.
“Because of these hyperpartisan silos of 24-hour cable news cycles and social media, party affiliation became a very distinct barrier, and I was just interested in removing that barrier,” he said.
Beitler is among Pennsylvania’s rising number of political independents. As of May 4, 16.5% of the commonwealth’s voters are registered as belonging to either a third party or no party, up from 13.1% in April 2016, when that year’s primary happened. (Third parties are included in this comparison because the state data from 10 years ago don’t differentiate between them and independent voters.)
But there hasn’t been a similar rise in independence among elected officials. Beitler is among the few, and none currently serve in the state legislature or hold statewide office.
According to Beitler and other independents, as well as some of the state’s lawmakers who have opted to affiliate with third parties while remaining officially tied with major ones, that’s largely because it is difficult to win office without party backing.
Key parts of running for office — such as gathering voter signatures, raising campaign funds, and building name recognition — are more challenging without party infrastructure, they told Spotlight PA.
Beitler ran unopposed in his last election, before becoming an independent. But he said the switch has changed “virtually nothing” about his day-to-day work as a county commissioner.
He retained all of his assignments on committees, in which commissioners propose ordinances, and said his colleagues were supportive of the move.
The only notable difference, he said, would arise if he were to resign or not complete his term. Under Lehigh County’s home rule charter, the Board of Commissioners would need to appoint another independent to fill the seat.
While there are other independent county commissioners in Pennsylvania, the only one in Harrisburg in recent memory was John Yudichak, a former state Senator from Luzerne County who left the Democratic Party to become an independent in 2019.
Yudichak told Spotlight PA that his change was years in the making, and driven in part by what he saw as more extreme voices “crowding out” the blue-collar perspectives he felt he represented in Northeastern Pennsylvania. Luzerne County voters were fairly reliably Democrats until a decade ago, and the area has since gotten national attention for swinging to President Donald Trump.
Yudichak said switching his affiliation was the best way to create space for “an open, honest, rational debate” where “all folks are welcome.”
“It was a big risk. I had a very established political career,” Yudichak told Spotlight PA.
Party politics are ‘hard to beat’
After changing his registration, Yudichak began caucusing with legislative Republicans. He said the shift “enabled” him to accomplish more in the legislature by allowing him to bring together parties that “didn't talk to one another or weren't naturally aligned in coalition.”
He pointed to the Local Resource Manufacturing Tax Credit program as an example. Created in 2020, the program allows manufacturers that use natural gas to produce fertilizers and other petrochemical products to write off some of those costs. Yudichak sponsored an amendment that created the program and said his independent status helped him bring together building trades and business organizations, “working together as they had never done before.”
Yudichak retired from office just two years later. The 2020 redistricting cycle changed his district so that he no longer lived within its boundaries.
“It was just a personal decision,” he said of his retirement. “It was really not impacted by becoming an independent.
Since Yudichak’s departure, no Pennsylvania state legislators have been elected as independents or changed their party registration while in office.
Some lawmakers have explored third parties, but have not gone so far as to leave their own. In 2023, state Sens. Tony Williams (D., Philadelphia) and Lisa Boscola (D., Lehigh) affiliated with the Forward Party, a centrist political party founded by former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang.
Boscola, a moderate, has frequently broken ranks with her caucus on issues like banning trans girls from school sports (she supports the proposed restrictions). She has made cutting property taxes one of her central focuses. Williams is one of his party’s most committed proponents of public school alternatives, even as many in his party have backed off from the issue. Both are among the legislature’s longest-serving members.
Williams and Boscola continue to caucus with state Senate Democrats; they did not formally change their party registration. Both told Spotlight PA they do not intend to run as independents in future elections, citing the advantages that come with running as party-affiliated candidates.
In a statement, Boscola said Pennsylvania’s political “system isn’t really set up for independents to be successful. It may be possible if we had an open primary system where independents were able to vote in our taxpayer-funded primaries, but they are not.”
Williams added that the Democratic Party’s brand and local infrastructure are important for voter recognition and fundraising, and that without them, candidates would need significant funding to achieve the same level of visibility. Those perks, he said, are “hard to beat.”
“The brand is one thing, but the finances, I think, [are] even more important,” Williams told Spotlight PA.
Beitler agreed with both lawmakers, saying that running for office while being unaffiliated with any party can be difficult, even in local races.
Obtaining enough signatures to get on the ballot as a county commissioner in Lehigh County is a “serious commitment of time,” Beitler said. Doing so “without the backing of a party,” is all the more challenging, and becomes more so at higher levels of office.
“You have to get much more, and you're doing so completely alone, without any party apparatus to hold a petition signing event for you,” Beitler said. “The entire system is structured to maintain that two-party control.”
Other Pennsylvania lawmakers have echoed this sentiment. In April, incumbent U.S. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R., Pa.) told Punchbowl News that he would change his registration to independent if not for Pennsylvania’s closed primary system. U.S. Sen. John Fetterman (D., Pa.) has also faced questions about whether he’d leave his party, although he’s publicly rejected the idea.
As for Beitler’s political future, he said he is unsure what the change in registration will ultimately mean. He’s “probably done” serving as county commissioner after his current term ends, but hopes that by changing his registration, he can “normalize” independents in political office.
“You don't see [independents] at a much higher pay grade than me,” Beitler said. “You don't see ‘a John Fetterman’ make the move. It's political suicide to do so. But that, I think, is what we can try to work at changing at my level.”