(File Photo: Source for Photo: FILE – Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti speaks during a President Joe Biden campaign event in Scranton, Pa., April 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File)
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti on Tuesday announced a bid for Congress in Pennsylvania, adding yet another competitive Democrat to the 2026 midterm election lineup in a state that gives her party perhaps its best chance to gain multiple seats without redrawing congressional lines.
The ranks of Democrats now running for Congress in Pennsylvania include a prominent mayor and a state labor leader, and give the party the kind of candidate-recruitment buzz it needs ahead of next year’s congressional elections. At stake is a controlling majority in the U.S. House.
Cognetti, a mainstay on stage when national Democrats campaign in her working-class city, has long been viewed as the party’s best candidate to try to unseat freshman Rep. Rob Bresnahan. The district is full of Democrats who more recently have backed President Donald Trump.
Cognetti will campaign as an independent-minded Democrat and can-do corruption-fighting mayor who beat the party’s nominee in 2019 to grab the top office in Scranton, a heavily Democratic city.
“People here are sick of self-serving politicians,” she said in an interview. “I’ve shown in Scranton that we can build government for people and be honest with people. I have done it with an independent streak and I think we will be able to take that successfully to the whole district.”
Seats like Bresnahan’s will be of prime importance in 2026: Democrats need just three seats to flip control of the U.S. House and party leaders say the road to the majority likely goes through Pennsylvania. The state holds four of the 35 seats nationwide that Democrats are targeting.
Three of those — including the neighboring districts now represented by Bresnahan and fellow freshman Republican Rep. Ryan Mackenzie — were among the narrowest races in the country last year. Without Trump on the ballot next year to bring out his loyal voters — and given the long history of midterm defeats for the party of the president — Democrats have reason to feel good.
Redistricting not an option
For Democrats in Pennsylvania, redrawing the state’s congressional boundaries to increase their chances of picking up seats isn’t an option.
That requires legislation and no such bill would be likely to pass the state’s politically divided Legislature. That means the party is relying on recruiting good candidates, a task involving Gov. Josh Shapiro, himself a potential 2028 contender for the White House.
The Scranton-based district Cognetti is running in is often a destination during presidential campaigns, with its split electorate attracting candidates from both parties. It is also the birthplace of former President Joe Biden.
Cognetti, 45, has experience in the U.S. Treasury Department and with the Scranton school board and is viewed by party operatives as a rising star in Pennsylvania.
As mayor of Scranton, Pennsylvania’s 7th-biggest city, she has a good relationship with Shapiro and is a sought-after figure at political rallies and during presidential visits, whether greeting Biden or former Vice President Kamala Harris on the airport tarmac or warming up crowds at their rallies.
‘The future of the Democratic Party’
Her task isn’t an easy one: the district has voted for Trump in the last three presidential elections and the Democrat who held it until last year, Matt Cartwright, was a perennial target of Republicans.
Cognetti was at the top of practically every Democrat’s list to succeed Cartwright.
“Top down, going into next year, I have been blown away by recruitment,” said Brittany Crampsie, a Democratic campaign strategist in Pennsylvania. “People want to run in seats where we had to do strong-arming to get candidates to say ‘yes’ last year, three years ago.”
Crampsie said people like Cognetti are “the future of the Democratic Party.”
Cognetti’s candidacy is the second big get for Democrats in one week. Last week, the head of Pennsylvania’s state firefighters’ union, Bob Brooks, declared his candidacy to challenge Mackenzie.
The Allentown-area district already has five Democrats running.
But Brooks has Shapiro’s support, as well as backing from a pair of labor unions, U.S. Rep. Chris Deluzio and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. He’s talking up his working-class roots as a career firefighter and union guy who runs his own landscaping and snow-plowing company.
His campaign is playing up his volunteerism as a youth baseball coach and his tattoo: a bulldog in a fire helmet.
“The party of labor, I believe, is the Democrat Party, but I don’t think the Democrat Party talks about or to the working class people anymore, and I think we need to get back to that,” Brooks said in an interview. “The Republicans, they talked about us, they talk to us, but then they go down to DC and they vote against us.”
