The Philly GOP is dead. Long live the Philly GOP.

Two members of the Working Families Party will join 14 Democrats and one Republican on City Council in 2024. Is it a political sea change, or an electoral sleight of hand?

“Together we have left the Republican Party to the dustbin of history,” said Nicolas O’Rourke, who will join fellow Working Families member Kendra Brooks on Council. But a postelection Inquirer analysis hit closer to the truth: “Infighting between Philadelphia’s Democratic Party establishment and its progressive wing escalated Tuesday.”

Philadelphia is not embarking on a new era of three-party competition. Nor, despite O’Rourke’s boast, has the WFP replaced the GOP as the second banana. How could it? It is not really a separate party, but rather an offshoot of the Democratic Party’s disgruntled progressive wing.

Working Families members pretend to be a third party when it suits them, then retreat to the party of Jefferson and Jackson when the going gets tough. It’s a two-and-a-half-party system — a perversion of the City Charter’s guarantee of minority representation.

And let’s be honest: The dishonesty works. You’ve got to hand it to the Working Families Party — it knows how the game is played, and managed to play it better than the Philadelphia Republicans. That’s a low bar, but it’s the one the party needed to surmount, and it did.

» READ MORE: The Working Families Party wants to have it both ways | Kyle Sammin

Is that a death knell for the Grand Old Party, as O’Rourke claims? Hardly. The Working Families Party only succeeded in a few cherry-picked races. For it to establish itself as a real opposition party in contrast to Bob Brady’s Democrats, it’ll have to openly challenge both parties.

That said, if Republicans in the city want to maintain any semblance of a party at all, they must get back to the basics of electoral politics — starting by running candidates, even in places that they might not win. Talk to the people, figure out where they are unsatisfied with the Democratic establishment. Organizers from the Working Families Party did this, and it paid off.

Look at the district races for City Council: Eight of the 10 seats had only one candidate, a Democrat. The 3rd District had an independent challenger to the Democratic incumbent — he lost, but at least he gave the people a choice. And the 10th District, where the city GOP actually tried, reelected Republican Brian J. O’Neill to a 12th term.

The one-party races show a lack of effort by the GOP and disprove the claim that the Working Families Party is anything but a cadre of Democrats disguised as socialists. If they really wanted to challenge the establishment, both parties would have run someone in some of these districts. Instead, they were content to fight over the scraps.

In the mayor’s race, Cherelle Parker won a thumping victory, as expected, but David Oh’s 25% of the vote is the best showing for a Republican mayoral candidate in 20 years, despite a massive fundraising disadvantage and a party base that saw little reason to turn out. (The Working Families Party did not field a mayoral candidate.) Oh’s vote totals would have been enough to keep his at-large seat on City Council, had he run for that instead.

Can the Republican Party learn something from his effort? Oh made a solid run in a race that was lost the moment the Democrats nominated someone not named Helen Gym.

He did so as a sensible, well-informed legislator with a record of ignoring national party planks that don’t make sense for Philadelphia. Indeed, some of Oh’s campaign planks could be called more moderate and sensible than Parker’s — like saying that her plan to bring the National Guard to Kensington made no sense and wouldn’t work. It was an honest take from a member of the party that often wants to look tough on crime first and ask questions second.

But what does it matter? If David Oh was the best Republican nominee in decades but still lost the mayor’s race by 50 points, why should Republicans bother?

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There are three reasons.

First, rebuilding the party across the city is the only way the Republicans can take back those two at-large seats — and that starts with a credible candidate at the top of the ticket. The minority seats on City Council were intended to provide alternative voices, not just the echoes of the majority party. Making that happen means rebuilding the party capacity that’s decayed over the years.

Second, if Republicans expect to nominate statewide candidates who can win over independent voters, the thousands of Republicans across Philadelphia and its suburbs need to be encouraged to vote and to be active in the party. The current system gives the GOP a chicken-and-egg problem: An increasingly rural party nominates candidates that care about their interests most, which turns off city voters, which makes the party even more rural, and so on. Winning at the state level means earning votes in the suburbs, and even in the cities.

Third, a strong Philly GOP elevates all city voices in statewide policy debate. In the state Supreme Court election, Allegheny County outvoted Philadelphia by about 80,000 votes, despite having about 330,000 fewer residents. How did they do that? A competitive local election for county executive forced both parties to work hard and turn out their people. Philly could do the same, and make Harrisburg listen to the concerns of urban Democrats and urban Republicans.

The Republican Party in Philadelphia isn’t dead, no matter what O’Rourke says, but it’s been asleep for a long time. If it wants to keep City Council diverse and statewide elections winnable, then it must wake up.