True disrupter candidates are rare, but Pennsylvania has at least two. Brothers Joe and Sean Gale are running a true grassroots campaign that has taken aim not just at the Democrats, but the GOP establishment as well.
Joe Gale — a Montgomery County Commissioner — has routinely taken the establishment GOP to task on high profile issues. Over the last year and a half, he has been a vocal critic of the state GOP for their role in passing ACT 77, which allowed for mass mail-in voting. Every Republican member of the Pennsylvania Senate voted for ACT 77, which was passed prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. The legislation allowed for 50 days of no excuse mail-in voting, while also eliminating a requirement for voters to need a valid reason for in order to request a mail-in ballot.
Predictably so, Gale’s willingness to challenge party bosses has made him unpopular in establishment GOP circles. His anti-establishment reputation dates back to the very beginning of his political career, when he ran unendorsed in 2015.
Gale decided to run when the Montgomery County Republican Committee endorsed a former board member of Planned Parenthood for the position of Montgomery County Commissioner. Bewildered at the party’s willingness to back a candidate with views that fly in the face of conservative values, he decided to enter the race. “I was outraged and decided to run unendorsed on the core values of moral character and fiscal responsibility to give Republicans a true pro-life conservative choice in the primary,” reads Gale’s website.
Despite a rather stacked deck against him, Joe Gale was able to emerge victorious in his 2015 election. In doing so, he became the youngest person to earn a position on the Montgomery County Board of Commissioners at the age of 26.
Since getting elected, Gale has stayed true to the values he ran on. He did not flinch when calling out the extremist Black Lives Matter movement and subsequent violent riots that gripped the nation last summer. “The perpetrators of this urban domestic terror are radical left-wing hate groups like Black Lives Matter,” said Gale in a June 2020 press release. “This organization, in particular, screams racism not to expose bigotry and injustice, but to justify the lawless destruction of our cities and surrounding communities. Their objective is to unleash chaos and mayhem without consequence by falsely claiming they, in fact, are the victims.”
Joe Gale being one of the few politicians with backbone on this issue sent shockwaves throughout the state. Keep in mind that this was a time when national Republican leaders were groveling for the approval of the BLM movement and affiliated radical left wing groups; breathing life into anti-American agendas because people were screaming about it on Twitter. Like the vast majority of the political class, the GOP was afraid of calling last summer’s political violence exactly what it was because that would rock the boat too much. They believe it could jeopardize elections, which of in turn would disrupt their industry.
Joe Gale stood up, however, and like any true America first conservative, he was subjected to intense backlash. National media shined a spotlight on online petitions calling for Gale’s resignation. The end result of this media dogpiling game was dozens of leftist agitators picketing outside of Gale’s home, which make no mistake, was exactly their intent.
True to his Trumpian form, Gale fired back, however. “The online petition is irrelevant and consists of signers from all over the nation,” he said at the time. “There are just as many people, probably more, that agree with me. Millions of signatures could have been collected demanding President Obama to resign when he was in office and the same could be done now against President Trump.”
Turning the Tide One Room at a Time
Not only did Gale refuse to resign after the aforementioned intimidation, he has walked nothing back in the months since. He addressed the incident candidly and directly when he spoke with us in Philadelphia just a few weeks ago.
A Fishtown room filled with members of our writing team, friends and family assembled for a “Cup of Joe” event, which is the bread and butter of the Gale campaign. Since before Joe or Sean officially announced their respective campaigns, they have been touring the state of Pennsylvania and doing speaking events. Sometimes they talk to small rooms with less than a dozen people, other times they address large amphitheater settings with 150+ in attendance. Sometimes they do 2-3 cup of joe events in a day.
This type of genuine access is practically unheard of in politics above a county level, as is the level of honesty. The Gale brothers gave a very informative talk that bluntly addressed the issues facing Pennsylvania and our nation as a whole, including the fecklessness of longtime, establishment GOP figures. The talk and subsequent informal Q&A session ran for over two and a half hours, driven purely by genuine interest of the attendees.
It is this style of politics that can truly usher in an America first agenda. It is a tried and true way to cut through uniparty corruption, leftist aggression and big tech censorship. What would get obfuscated by partisan media outlets is laid out clearly, with real time clarification. What would get suppressed by tech monopolies is distributed openly, free to spread via word-of-mouth. Which, don’t kid yourself, is still a very powerful way of distributing information.
How did I find out about Joe Gale in the first place you may ask? I was still working retail at the time, and a co-worker of mine was actually protesting outside of Gale’s home following the BLM statement. I never revealed my beliefs, or even the existence of this website to my co-workers, but I certainly made a mental note that Gale was worth supporting.
The fact that millions of Americans live in fear of retribution merely for challenging the views of ideological extremists is exactly why conservatives need to stand with true fighters. When the rare breed of politician truly willing to fight for their constituents, and against those who directly threaten those constituents, they deserve all the support possible.
Ultimately, there are very few, if any politicians willing to be as honest as Joe Gale has been throughout his young political career. The term “grassroots” gets thrown around too often, in my opinion. Supposed grassroots candidates betray their voters once they get a taste of the industry all the time, or they were never truly grassroots in the first place. Against the odds, the Gale brothers have perfected a method that works amidst an America in crisis, however, and we need much more of that going forward.
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