| Brian Fitzpatrick’s own voters are jumping ship.
CBS News spoke directly with Catholic voters in Bucks County who expressed opposition to the cost-spiking war of choice in Iran that Fitzpatrick has supported, and to Trump’s attacks on the Pope.
A former Fitzpatrick voter told CBS News that he is likely to vote Fitzpatrick out this time around, saying: “I just think that the policy of the Republican Party right now is too one-sided.”
 NPR also spoke with Bucks County Catholics about Fitzpatrick, who they declare is “one of the most vulnerable Republican members of Congress going into the 2026 midterms.” When asked to interview for their reporting , “Fitzpatrick’s office did not respond to requests for comment.”
DCCC Spokesperson Eli Cousin:
“Brian Fitzpatrick can’t outrun his record of supporting a cost-spiking war in Iran, and he can’t outrun a brutal political environment. His own voters jumping ship is proof that Fitzpatrick has never been more vulnerable.”
Read key highlights from CBS News:
CBS News: “Let the pope have his say”: Pennsylvania Catholics caught between Trump and Pope Leo
By Zak Hudak | April 22, 2026
- Catholic churches seem to be everywhere in this southeastern Pennsylvania county — 33 parishes, to be exact — and for good reason. More than a third of Bucks County residents are Catholic, according to the privately run 2020 U.S. Religion Census.
- The Iran war, Pope Leo XIV’s biting criticisms of it and, in turn, Mr. Trump’s attacks on the pope have many Catholics in Bucks County watching closely in a midterm year.
- William Watkins, a Democrat from Bristol who has voted for GOP Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick in past elections, told CBS News after a Friday morning Mass that he would likely vote against the moderate Republican in the fall if the U.S. is still at war with Iran on Election Day.
- “I would do it as a protest,” he said. “Not that I think he’s not a good candidate. I just think that the policy of the Republican Party right now is too one-sided.”
- When Fitzpatrick first won his seat, Republicans held a supermajority among county elected officials, controlling all but one of the county’s 12 seats. Today, Democrats hold 11 of those 12 seats.
- Still, the war with Iran may be a bigger political issue for Fitzpatrick than the president’s spats with the pope. Polling suggests most Americans oppose the war — including most Catholics.
- “I don’t like [the GOP’s] policies connected to the war,” Watkins, the Democrat from Bristol, said. “I don’t think they should have gone in the way they did, and I don’t think they’re going to be able to finish it the way they think they will. It’s a lose-lose situation.”
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