May 25, 2021

A Chadds Ford Township Republican fundraiser Monday night carried with it an ominous message. At the May 24 gathering, the guest speaker cautioned the party faithful against treating Democrats as the enemy, especially in the face of a potentially dangerous foreign adversary.

Kenneth Braithwaite — a Chadds Ford resident, former ambassador to Norway in 2017, who served briefly as Navy secretary from May 29, 2020, until the end of the Trump administration — invoked the late President John Kennedy by reminding the Republicans that the country shouldn’t be looking for a Republican answer or a Democratic answer to problems. Rather the country should look for the right answer.

“There have been many divisive periods in the history of our great country … but they have never been as dangerous or as challenging as they are today.”

Most ominously, Braithwaite said the country faces the greatest peril since the War of 1812 when the British invaded and burned the White House. That new enemy does have the military strength and political will to “eliminate our way of life,” something neither Nazi Germany nor Imperial Japan could have done in WWII.

“We were too strong, too mighty, and at the peak of who we were as a nation,” Braithwaite said. He continued by referencing the Cold War and the Soviet Union, saying, “The Soviet Union could have never, ever defeated us in any kind of conflict. They had great first-strike capability, but that was it.”

Today, though, we have a different potential adversary in China.

“That adversary has not only the national will but the political system as a communist government, [and] they have the financial and military wherewithal to actually destroy the United States of America,” he said. “And not just in a first strike, but in consistent, engaged warfare.”

As a former Navy secretary, he said he knew things he couldn’t go into, but “what I learned of the People’s Republic of China is all of that, and then some.”

Braithwaite did not offer any diplomatic solution to a potential conflict with China but said some people anticipate war with China within the next 10 years.

“I pray to God above that that does not happen,” he said. “The only way that we as Americans will hold on to what we have is by being vigilant and remembering at the end of the day that we are all Americans, right or left, black or white, male or female.”

He went on to criticize the current state of mainstream journalism, saying it’s more about spin than objective reporting, that “it is the cause of divisiveness today,” and that Trump’s handling of the media added to that divisiveness. He also said Republicans need to stop hating Democrats and that Democrats should stop hating Republicans.

“We need, as Abraham Lincoln said, to bind up our nation’s wounds…Our job is to remember that, although we believe differently than the Democrats, they are on our team. We may not like their point of view, we may feel differently, but they are not evil. They are not the enemy.”

The former Navy pilot and secretary is considering a run for U.S. Senate to replace incumbent Pat Toomey but said later he hadn’t made a final decision on that yet. However, during his speech, he said John Lehman — the Navy secretary under President Reagan — sent him a note after reading a news article critical of Braithwaite that Democrats must be afraid that he would seek the senatorial nomination.

He also said that U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, a Democrat from Virginia and Hillary Clinton’s running mate in 2016, told him he’d like Braithwaite to run for senate because the two could work together, even when they disagree.

Again, Braithwaite invoked Lincoln, who said, “No man should have everything that they want; that the only way to progress is through compromise.”

“I hope that we can remember that it’s not winner take all,” Braithwaite told the Republicans, “That when it’s our turn to be in the majority, we respect the minority.”

As co-host of the Chadds Ford Republican Party fundraiser at Pescatores Monday night, township Supervisor Noelle Barbone urged people to get to the polls on Nov. 2.

“We need to win the small elections to win the big election,” she said.

The May 24 gathering was the first time in more than a year for the local GOP to get together, and township party leader Mary Kot was glad for the opportunity.

“We really took a year off,” Kot said. “We couldn’t do anything, but we have great volunteers that always step up when we need them to. So, we didn’t do much during COVID, but we’re all so happy to be involved again.”

It’s still too early to set dates or specific events, but Kot said the party is hoping to have a few more fundraisers because they weren’t able to raise money in 2020.

Several county-wide candidates attended the event, including Joshua Brown, running for sheriff, and Dave Galluch, who wants to run for U.S. House.

Also speaking was Delaware County Republican Party Chairman Tom McGarrigle, who said he was still concerned about the lack of sufficient ballots put out by the county Board of Elections.

When Frank Catania ran the Election Bureau, he said, there was never any problem, but in the three elections under the Democrats, “each one gets worse than the one before. We just ran out of ballots only in heavily Republican precincts.”

He said it was frightening how the Democratic Party — which now controls the county — has expanded the county payroll.

“They’ve spent millions and millions of dollars whenever they have a whim to do it,” McGarrigle said.

As an example, he said that when the Republicans had control, they paid a lawyer $70,000 per year to handle virtually every tax appeal case that came along, but the attorney hired by the Democrats has already billed $500,000 “and it’s only May.”

Brown told the audience that it was his grandmother who asked him to run for sheriff. He said he’s spent the past 20 years working in and with counter-terrorism units as a national security specialist.

“People don’t realize that in Pennsylvania, the sheriff is the keeper of the peace. That’s the key thing when I read our Constitution. If you go anywhere in Delaware County and you don’t feel that there’s peace, it means the sheriff is not doing his job. It means the sheriff is not accountable to the people of Delaware County. That has to change.”

Galluch, who wants to challenge Mary Gay Scanlon in 2022, introduced himself, saying he’s the first Republican to file against her and that the Chadds Ford event was his first time out on the campaign. He is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and was a Navy special ops officer for eight years, and now works for Comcast.