White’s night: State Rep. Martina White, a Parkwood resident, celebrates at the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 5 after defeating Matt Darragh in the 170th Legislative District. She won the 58th and 66th wards and finished with an unofficial 54.26 percent of the vote. MARIA YOUNG / TIMES PHOTO
Hillary Clinton, like fellow Democrat Barack Obama four years earlier, won the presidential vote in the Northeast.
But Clinton didn’t match Obama’s 2012 totals, and Donald Trump earned far more votes than Mitt Romney did four years ago.
Trump won two of the 66 wards in Philadelphia: the 26th in South Philadelphia and the 66th in the Far Northeast.
In all, Clinton won more than 62 percent of the vote in the Northeast’s 14 wards.
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Despite winning in the Northeast, the rest of the city and in the suburbs, Clinton lost Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes to Trump.
Democrats were surprised at losing the state and the election to Trump, and many of them continue to grumble at the outcome.
Marcel Groen, chairman of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party, said his 12-year-old granddaughter woke up the day after the election in tears, dressed in black mourning Clinton’s loss.
Groen wrote a letter to supporters saying he fears that Trump will want to build a wall across the southern border.
“I don’t understand the mindset of our people. Have we really gotten to the point where we think electing a president is like winning the Survivor series of the year? I am scared and frightened because so many people voted not only against their own best interest, but they also seemed to ignore the racist, homophobic, anti-women and anti-immigrant rhetoric. It was as if they were angry and wanted to punish all of us; and I fear they may have accomplished just that,” he wrote.
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Both presidential candidates sent surrogates to the Northeast in the final week of the campaign.
U.S. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York and former San Antonio Mayor and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisneros addressed Clinton supporters at her campaign office at 4426 Frankford Ave.
Ivanka Trump and Erin Elmore, a former contestant on The Apprentice, stumped for Donald Trump at Cannstatter’s.
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State Reps. Martina White (R-170th dist.) and John Taylor (R-177th dist.) won competitive races, helping Republicans to a majority of 122–81.
White defeated Democrat Matt Darragh by winning both the 58th and 66th wards.
Taylor trailed Democrat Joe Hohenstein in the 23rd Ward, but made up the difference elsewhere.
The state House will begin the 2017–18 session with the largest Republican majority since 1957–58.
Senate Republicans picked up three seats to increase their margin to a veto-proof 34–16.
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Republican U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey beat Democrat Katie McGinty, a Rhawnhurst native, in a tight race.
Toomey won the 58th, 63rd and 66th wards in the Northeast.
On the Saturday before the election, he and Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton campaigned at Pub 36, Frankford and Sheffield avenues.
On the day before the election, Sen. Toomey started his day at Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 5 in the Far Northeast. ••
