As in Montgomery County, it looks control of Bucks County’s courthouse will turn on voter turnout.

The last time Democrats took over the Bucks County Courthouse, police and protesters clashed in the streets.

It was 1983, and turmoil over the Point Pleasant pumping station, a water-diversion project in Upper Bucks, inspired angry voters to give the Democrats a majority on the county Board of Commissioners.

Four years later, the balance of power returned to the Republicans, and the GOP has been in charge since.

While the current campaign is considerably tamer than in 1983, Democrats think they can stage another revolution on Nov. 6. They are counting on dissatisfaction with President Bush, which polls show has soured many voters on the GOP itself, as well as a general antipathy to incumbents, inspired in part by the Harrisburg pay raise.

“We think it’s going to be a tough election,” said Bucks Republican Party chairman Harry Fawkes.

The campaign debate has had a classic insider-outsider flavor, with Democrats arguing that Bucks Republicans have grown arrogant with unchecked power, and the GOP pointing out contradictions between the challengers’ records and rhetoric.

“Our opponents and their party have controlled the courthouse now for 20 years,” said Democrat Steve Santarsiero, a teacher who is chairman of the Lower Makefield supervisors. “In that amount of time, sprawl has increased throughout the county, the environment has been damaged. . . . Taxes have increased.”

He and his running mate, Diane Marseglia, a Middletown Township supervisor, last week announced they would cancel a $140 million project to replace the aging and overstuffed courthouse in Doylestown. They said that the project was an example of wasteful spending that has helped increase the county tax rate 46 percent in the last six years.

Republican Commissioners Charles H. Martin and James Cawley counter that the Democratic team has flip-flopped on the courthouse project, increased taxes dramatically in their townships, and approved developments that contributed to sprawl.

“They’re using smoke and mirrors,” Cawley said.

Bucks County had to put more money into its employees’ pension fund, improve the county prison, and compensate for reduced state human-services grants, Martin said.

“If you’re in the majority, you have to make sure you’re doing the right thing – you have to be responsible,” he said.

So far, neither opposition to the courthouse project nor Democratic criticism of pay-to-play appears to have excited the same grassroots passions that the Point Pleasant pump did 24 years ago.

But there are several trends in the Democrats’ favor: The party continues to register more new voters than the GOP and has narrowed the countywide registration gap to 21,300. Democrats also have had success in local races – winning 119 out of 170 township board seats up for election in 2005 – and have found enough volunteers to establish new committees in 14 townships.

Last year, the party elected a congressman from the county, U.S. Rep. Patrick Murphy (D., Pa.). Democrats have carried the county in every presidential election since 1992, and voters have also gone for Gov. Rendell and U.S. Sen. Bob Casey (D., Pa.) in recent elections.

“We have increased Democratic visibility,” said county Democratic Party chairman John Cordisco. “The momentum is going our way.”

Fawkes said that the national political climate is not helping the cause in Bucks. “Some people blame us for some of what’s happening, but it’s not our fault,” he said.

Still, longtime Bucks politicos say that the Democrats probably need to have a turnout of at least 25 percent of registered voters, relatively high for an off-year election, in order to win. Fawkes’ county GOP organization, honed over decades, is known for its skill at mobilizing its core supporters.

“If it’s a low-turnout election, the Republicans are better at turning out their people,” said Larry Otter, a former Democratic committeeman who has run for Common Pleas Court judge and district attorney in Bucks County.

“I don’t get the sense, walking up and down the streets of Bucks County, that people are counting down the hours to Nov. 6,” said Andy Warren, who was a Republican commissioner in the 1990s and is now a Democrat. “I don’t get the sense that there’s any driving issue – nothing seems to have caught on.”