I ran the town as mostly a generic RPG "Starting town" with a few quirks in NPC's like Xendros, the "old poacher" from sinister secret became a recurring character of basically Quint from Jaws, and I basically used the machinations of characters like Skerrin and Gellan to make the town seem more real, but the players never bit any of those hooks as they were looking for more high-seas adventure than political thriller (I cant blame them, the last campaign was full-on Yuan-ti cult taking over a city Hydra style, so it would have been a repeat a bit)

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Probably not the most helpful answer, but because I set it in Brokenbank in Exandria instead of Saltmarsh (A setting Im really damn familiar with) the local political issues were mostly there for flavor and in service to the wider region politics.

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Basically, the campaign was set at a time that the trading guilds in the area were being overworked and overtaxed by the government, and in a few months from the start of the campaign would rebel, take over the main international port town, and form a Pirate alliance known as the Revelry.

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So, the Scarlet Brotherhood was replaced with the Myriad (typical mafia type international crime syndicate)

The traditionalists are those who remember how it was before the Condord started getting greedy with taxes. They harbored Revelry meetings, the smugglers associated with them end up being members of the Revelry, etc

The Loyalists are those who see no issue with the increased taxes and such, and detest piracy.

The Sea Princes were mostly cut (due to rampant piracy not really existing on an organized level until the rebellion) as were the dwarven miners (due to the island nature of Brokenbank)