| Democrats are on offense and in a strong position to flip all 4 key battleground House seats in Pennsylvania. A major reason why? The strength of our candidates.
The Washington Post spotlights how Bob Harvie, Bob Brooks, Paige Cognetti, and Janelle Stelson have unique personal stories, strong community ties, and plans to fight for Pennsylvania families that will help propel them to victory in November.
Read key highlights from the piece for yourself:
- Pennsylvania is home to four congressional districts drawn so tightly a stiff wind could flip them, and they could determine whether Republicans keep their slim majority or hand the gavel to Democrats.
- “The road to control of the House goes right through Pennsylvania,” Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro told me. “Whoever wins the four most contested House races in this state will decide who controls the majority in Washington next year.”
- Shapiro supports these challengers facing GOP incumbents: Bob Harvie against Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick in the 1st; Bob Brooks against Rep. Ryan Mackenzie in the 7th; Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti against Rep. Rob Bresnahan in the 8th; and Janelle Stelson against Rep. Scott Perry in the 10th.
ON PA-01:
- Democrat Bob Harvie began campaigning as a teenager on the sidewalks of Bucks County’s Bristol borough, handing out literature for his uncle’s mayoral run. “The first campaign I worked, I was 13,” he said, recalling the 1985 race. His mother helped start the Bristol Parent Teacher Organization; his grandfather helped organize the local Little League. “That’s the way we did the campaign,” Harvie said. “You got involved. You did something to make your community better.”
- That instinct is why, at 54, this high school teacher left the classroom for the campaign trail. “My mom had four brothers. They all served in the military,” he said. “I’ve always been raised to love this country … and I can’t stand what’s happening to it.” That comes bundled with frustration at his own party: “I’ve been a Democrat my whole life and feel the party has lost its way.”
- What Harvie is really selling is roots. His great-grandfather sold pasta off a Bristol pushcart around 1900; his mother, nearly 82, has lived her whole life on one block. “I’ve never lived anywhere else but Bucks,” he said.
ON PA-07:
- Born in North Adams, Massachusetts, Democrat Bob Brooks, 53, hauled a paper route by age 10 and worked in a factory before high school ended — then his house burned down his senior year. His mother moved the family to Bath, near her parents. He loaded a U-Haul and followed. College didn’t stick — “school wasn’t for me” — so he cycled through gas stations, pizza delivery and bartending, until a buddy told him to take the civil service test.
- That exam made him a Bethlehem firefighter — “the best job in the world,” he called it — and a union man. He was tapped as shift vice president partly because he said he already knew how to run a clam bake. He rose to president of the state firefighters’ association, coached baseball for three decades and retired last year. “My wife said I had to get a part-time job,” he joked of running. “I’m not quite sure this is what she had in mind.”
- He’s drawn food stamps, lived in public housing and faced foreclosure — hardship he wears like a credential. He said voters raise one issue the most with him: “affordability, the magic word of the day.”
ON PA-08:
- An auditor general’s report on the Scranton School District uncovered financial mismanagement that pushed Cognetti into local politics and an appointment to the school board. By the time Scranton’s mayor was indicted on extortion and bribery charges, Cognetti was pregnant with her first daughter. She watched the local Democratic machine anoint the mayor’s replacement behind closed doors. “I was not going to have that,” she said. She ran as an independent in 2019 and won — then won again in 2021 and again last year against the city’s Democratic Party chair.
- As mayor, she said she has “declined a city car, a gas card, a pandemic-era paycheck and a raise she was legally owed,” while improving Scranton’s credit rating from junk to A-minus. Cognetti is banking on voters looking at her governing record, not the party label. “People vote for the person, not the party,” she said.
ON PA-10:
- For 30 years, Janelle Stelson told other people’s stories from a television news desk.
- What turned a broadcast journalist into a candidate was a moment on air she cannot shake. “I was live on the set when the Supreme Court handed down the Dobbs decision, and our congressman was dancing in the streets,” she said of Rep. Scott Perry […] She ran against Perry in 2024 and came within a whisker of unseating him.
- Ask her what’s driving voters now, and she ticks off grocery prices and utility bills as data centers push costs onto neighborhoods. Corruption ranks right up there, which is why she supports term limits and sold her stock holdings before she launched her campaign.
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