Democrats to Target 4 Pennsylvania Republicans in Midterms

Democrats say they view several Republican-held Pennsylvania congressional districts as key to reclaiming the House majority.

Democrats need to net just three House seats in order to make House Minority Leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., as speaker of the House. Republicans expect to face a competitive climate as the American voters are known to favor the party out of power in the midterms.

To that end, Democrats will seek to oust Pennsylvania Republican Reps. Rob Bresnahan, Ryan Mackenzie, Scott Perry, and Brian Fitzpatrick.

Bresnahan, 35, is a freshman congressman who defeated six-term incumbent Matthew Cartwright in 2024. The new lawmaker represents Pennsylvania’s 8th Congressional District, a swing district that includes the historically Democrat cities of Scranton and Wilkes-Barre.

In many ways, the region exemplifies the Donald Trump phenomena, having voted for President Barack Obama‘s 2012 reelection campaign 56% to 44%, but then voting for President Donald Trump 54% to 45% in 2024. Even with Trump’s political coattails in the district, however, Cartwright lost by only 1.6 percentage points, and he has reportedly been mulling a bid to reclaim his seat in a 2026 rematch. 

“We encourage the far-left extremists who have hijacked the Democrat Party to keep pushing their message of open borders, higher taxes, and weak national security to the people of northeastern Pennsylvania. In the meantime, [Bresnahan] will continue to advocate for what is best for [northeastern Pennsylvania],” a spokeswoman for the congressman told The Daily Signal.

Whoever the Democrat that challenges Bresnahan in 2026 is will likely target the congressman for his stock trading since assuming office. 

Bresnahan previously campaigned on ending the practice of allowing members of Congress to trade stock while in office. The Pennsylvania freshman lawmaker is far from the only elected leader who has engaged in stock trading while in office.

A look at Capitol Trades, a website that tracks the trading of incumbent members of Congress, shows a number of members of both parties in both chambers engaging in the practice at volumes comparable to Bresnahan. Former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., in particular has been criticized by Republicans for engaging in the practice over her long tenure in Congress.

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, several senators wound up in hot water for their stock trades after receiving government briefings on the outbreak. Then-Sen. David Perdue, R-Ga., bought stock in a personal protective equipment company in 2020 on the same day he received a classified briefing on the virus. Likewise, then-Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., who at the time was chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, sold hundreds of thousands of dollars of stock in mid-February 2020 before the stock market declined rapidly in March.

This week, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., reintroduced the Preventing Elected Leaders from Owning Securities and Investments Act, which would prohibit sitting members of Congress and their spouses from purchasing or selling individual stocks while in office. The bill—the PELOSI Act, so named in a swipe at the former House speaker—would permit members of Congress and their families to invest in diversified mutual funds, exchange-traded funds, and U.S. Treasury bonds.

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