Philadelphia is on track to become the second most far left city (after New York) on the East Coast. The tell-tale sign for me was the Democratic primary in May 2026, which wiped out much of the old centrist-Union Democrat guard in the city’s Riverwards neighborhood. This far left takeover has been building for a long time.
It began as a slow trickle when ex-New Yorkers, also known as carpetbaggers, came to the city to start new careers in community and urban planning, the burgeoning green industry, community organizing and progressive politics. Why so many left New York and migrated to Philadelphia continues to be a mystery, but it’s probably because they couldn’t make a name for themselves there, as bigger cities equal more competition. Philadelphia, a small parochial fishbowl city by comparison, was the perfect city to colonize.
And colonize they did.
Their game plan was to first move into neighborhoods like Northern Liberties and Fishtown, traditionally working-class Democrat areas but hardly “new” Democrat in its praise of police defunding, DEI abuses, white guilt, an obsession with white supremacy, and gender/queer ideology. Fishtown soon “glowed” with far-left Democrat styles: tattoos, blue hair, yoga pants, esoteric high-priced restaurants instead of common-sense low-cost diners, coffee shops, and a love for dogs that knew no bounds.
The New York colonization affected all areas of life, including how childless millennial couples began referring to their pets as “fur babies,” whereupon they began taking their “fur babies” into shops and stores that had heretofore banned them. Pets became preferable to having real human babies, because babies were old hat, especially in this abortion-centric culture where the trend is to murder an eight or nine-month-old baby if the mother decides — in true Massachusetts style — she’d rather have a cocker spaniel instead.
With the doggie element through the roof, the colonizers began to take over empty tracks of land and use them as unofficial dog parks. That takeover eventually led to these land areas becoming actual dog parks — ownership via occupation. Pet stores the size of Walmart became common. It went with the yoga mats, the number of women describing themselves as ex-New York artists on a mission to bring progressive values to an ailing formerly mostly Catholic white working-class neighborhood.
They moved into neighborhoods while looking down their noses at long-time indigenous residents, refusing to get to know them or even to make eye contact with them when they passed them in the street. The indigenous neighbors caught the vibe and began to hate the intruders, at first referring to them as “yuppies,” but then forgoing that label for the far more direct, “usurper New Yorkers.”
The colonists joined neighborhood associations with a vehemence and slowly worked their way to the top. The old guard, the blue-collar folks, eventually became overwhelmed and dropped out, or they became “yes people” when an authoritarian ex- New Yorker was put in charge.
Eventually the New York Imprimatur was all over these old neighborhood associations.
The newbies were all far left Democrats, feminists, DEI advocates and diehard George Floyd fans. They demonstrated in the streets in 2020 during the Philly riots when they also staged a ruckus of an anti-police sit-in in front of the Fishtown police station on Girard Avenue. It was about this time that members of these groups opted to enter politics at the hyperlocal level, albeit with no experience and only having lived in the neighborhood for a couple of years.
In just a couple of years, they thought they had become experts in all things Philadelphia.
Women who had formerly described themselves as New York-born artists were now running for Philly Democrat committee person positions. Intensely ambitious, politics became their religion, pushing their arrogance to rise to new heights. The truth is, they think of themselves as vastly superior to the poor indigenous types who had been living in the neighborhood for decades.
They formed groups like the 5th Square PAC (Philadelphia’s Urbanist Political Action Committee), the Philadelphia Democratic Socialists of America, the Working Families Party (WFP), and Riverwards Area Democrats, an independent Democratic political organization, also known as RAD — how’s that for cool?
The goal of these groups was to radicalize the city’s Democrat Party, and to snuff out the old guard like Democrat Ward leader Margaret “Peg” Rzepski whose district also included the 31st Ward, where I happen to be a Republican committee person.
Rzepski, who held that position for decades, was voted out in the recent May primary for a New York transplant, Molly Hartman, who describes herself as a pedestrian and cyclist, and who worked as a Senior Advisor for Food Policy in NYC until 2018. Hartman then took the”‘migrant train” to Philadelphia where she wound up as the Senior Policy Director for At-Large Council member Rue Landau, a possible future Democrat candidate for mayor, although that’s unlikely to happen, even in the midst of a leftist revolution, because she is an open lesbian.
As the 1944 Leonard Bernstein song tells us, New York may be a hell of a town, but nobody wants to stay there, especially when you can sink your lefty claws into Philly.
RAD, it should be noted, endorsed Larry Krasner for DA in 2025.
MSN did a news story on a Philly organization known as Wards That Work, which launched in November 2025 with volunteers from Riverwards Area Democrats, Reclaim Philadelphia, Philadelphia Democratic Socialists of America, and the Philadelphia chapter of the Communist Party USA. Wards That Work claimed that far left Democrats had so much success in the May 2026 Democratic primary because of the groups’ canvassing efforts. Chalk it up to hyper-local intensity.
Yet this was not the case just a couple of years ago when far left Working Families Party members failed to get the support of mainstream incumbent Democrat committee people and ward leaders.
But that has all changed, meaning the revolution is in full gear.
If radical elements of the Democratic Party can gain control of the city’s Riverwards neighborhoods, it can easily ramp up and swallow the entire city. In the 31st Ward, for instance, where many thought former judge Pat Dugan would win handily over George Soros-appointed Krasner, Krasner went on to win nearly 65 percent of the vote with a 19 percent turnout in the 2025 election that drew 17 percent citywide.
That tells you something. Are there really that many ex-New Yorkers in the Riverwards now? The 31st Ward used to be a police and firefighter loving district, with church on Sundays and where Mom and Pop were not known as “birthing parents.”
Meanwhile, the colonists continue to trickle in, paving the way for the first Working Families socialist mayor in City Hall.