This is purely a lore/history question.
The description of Andoran says that all nobles either abdicated or were exiled after their revolution, and their lands and holdings were confiscated by the new state.
I have a campaign book that I want to run that is not a Paizo adventure path, and is not set in Golarion, so I need to transplant it. For geographical reasons, Andoran makes the most sense for the campaign to begin in, but the first adventure features a noble patron who is not all that they seem.
How could I possibly reconcile this with Andoran? Obviously, the "noble" could just be an elected official, perhaps a wealthy merchant. But are there any Andoran nobles still living on their ancestral lands, or at least in their ancestral mansions and keeps? All lands and holding were confiscated, but surely they were not turned out onto the streets - and what of nobles who allied with the revolution from the beginning?
Just fishing for some ideas here. Actual canon would be great, but I understand that it might be hard to come by.
I'll be running this campaign with the Savage Pathfinder rule set, FWIW, but I don't think that fact is terribly relevant to my question.
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Simply having them be someone who was formerly a noble who abdicated but managed to retain most/all of their personal land, wealth, and the respect of the people living on their land/area should really be good enough.
They don't even need to be an elected official in any capacity, if they have the coin, influence, and leadership in the region you want to play with there is practically nothing at all that the government would care to do as long as everything there seems on the up-n-up as far as peace, lawfully culture, and economic prosperity are upheld.
Nearly 100% of the politicians in the area I live IRL are all multimillionaires that own a TON of land and businesses and without the power wielded by these resources they literally never would have become politicians in the first place let alone pay enough ad-dollars to get their name out there and become "democratically elected" regardless of what they are REALLY like behind closed doors or what their personal code of ethics are.
In short, there is very little difference between what "nobility" is and what someone represents in a democratic/republic state when they have a boat-load of money, land, and resources.
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You could also have it be somebody who was well-off before, but made a fortune buying up confiscated land and buildings from the new government on the cheap once it realized how impractical holding onto various manors would be. So, the "noble" title is used ironically because he "inherited" from at least three different former nobles.
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I assume it would have followed very similarly to post-Revolutionary America: https://patriotmusic.com/aristocracy-in-america/
However since if you need to vote people into power, the people you already know are most likely the landed gentry, being the celebrities of the past, so it's highly likely that even though the titles are gone, a lot of the nobles got elected and formed committees to redistribute land back to them. Plus I hate to say it, but estate management is a job and sometimes the most qualified person is the person who used to own the estate. Not always, of course, and all landed gentry had help to keep things going and to make decisions on their behalf.