First Whig Party Candidate Elected Since Reconstruction

Modern Whig Party candidate Robert “Heshy” Bucholtz, a 39-year old software engineer, was voted in as an election judge in the Democratic bastion of Rhawnhurst in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on Tuesday. 

This is one of the first Whig candidates elected since the party became defunct in the 1860’s, and Bucholtz is the only Modern Whig currently in office. The last Whig politician to serve in Philadelphia was Robert Conrad, who was mayor of the city from 1854-1856.

Bucholtz won by a vote of 36-24. He is now responsible for overseeing equipment and procedures at the polls.

The Modern Whig Party portrays itself as the moderate alternative to the Republican and Democrat parties, emphasizing its opposition to “corruption, ineffective leadership, and ideological paralysis.”

Like the Whig Party of old, the modern brand emphasizes its ties to the “Whig ideology” of the Enlightenment, the American founding, and the Father of the original American Whig Party, Henry Clay, Abraham Lincoln’s “beau ideal of a statesmen.”

The original Whig Party collapsed due to steep sectional divisions and equivocation over the issue of slavery, but the new iteration hopes it can build traction in its biggest wave election since the victory of President Zachary Taylor over Democratic candidate Lewis Cass in 1848.