Pennsylvania Democrats attract some buzz in the party's bid to take back the US House

Source: AP

Updated 5:53 AM EDT, September 2, 2025


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.

Read more: https://apnews.com/article/congress-pennsylvania-house-cognetti-brooks-bresnahan-mackenzie-1e4ec001ee97b229f87e6c3d8635705d

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We have 2 swing seats here in PA that were (D)s that we lost in 2024. This is one of them (PA-8, Matt Cartwright's former seat). There are also 2 other swing seats in PA with (R)s, where one was very close to flipping (PA-10) but the other is going to need work (PA-1).