In 2026, the House Democrats have nominated a cornucopia of crazed and dangerous candidates, including a socialist radical Muslim lifetime student who wiped her dirty hands on the flag, a Jihadist who was a character witness for a terrorist, as well as a returning Congresswoman who (allegedly) is the daughter of a war criminal and (allegedly) was married to her brother.
I guess, in that respect, they are doing much better in Pennsylvania, District 7, by nominating Bob Brooks, who is only a phony working man, a Bernie Bro, and a candidate with a checkered (at best) financial history.
PA-7 is my home district, the Lehigh Valley Congressional District in Pennsylvania. It is anchored by the cities of Allentown and Bethlehem. This district has been described by political analyst Michael Barone as a crucial bellwether in national politics. Its politics have long been thought to be moderate. Heading into the 2026 elections, based on results from the 2024 and 2020 presidential elections, the Cook Partisan Voter Index for this district is R+1, meaning that this district's results were 1 percentage point more Republican than the national average.
PA-7’s one-term incumbent Congressman is Republican Ryan Mackenzie (PA-07), who is being challenged by Brooks. (Full disclosure – I have known and liked Rep. Mackenzie for decades.)
The only independent public poll of the district race is one by Franklin & Marshall College that found that Brooks holds a 45 percent to 40 percent lead over Rep. Mackenzie, with 16 percent of the voters surveyed undecided. In my experience, Franklin & Marshall has never been a particularly good pollster. At the RCP, the generic currently gives the Democrats an 8.1-point margin. Granted, I suspect that the polling is generally oversampling Democrats, who are especially eager to vote against the “devil,” Donald Trump, and undersampling Republicans.
Prominent Republicans, including Vice President JD Vance, Speaker Mike Johnson (LA-04), House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (OH-04) and now RNC chair Joe Gruters, have all appeared in the district for Rep. Mackenzie. Gruters was there last Sunday, to a packed room of 50 Republican volunteers, despite the rainstorm that was deluging the area.
Remarks from Rep. Mackenzie may be found here. His campaign website is here.
Brooks is running his first race for public office. He is a former longtime firefighter and firefighter’s union president who likes to play up his working man persona. But it is just an act, as can be seen in this coaching session from his party’s campaign consultants. In reality, Brooks is a lobbyist who owns hundreds of thousands of shares of stock and could be worth anywhere from $148,000 to $3.89 million.
Besides, I don’t know many regular working men who promote his kind of extreme left-wing policies. Brooks supports Medicare for All, i.e., socialized medicine, which bars private health insurance plans from offering any of the services offered by a new one-size-fits-all federal government program. He has been endorsed by Planned Parenthood. He wants Congress to eliminate the cap on income subject to the Social Security payroll tax. And he would increase federal spending by trillions of dollars per year, which would certainly require huge tax increases on ordinary taxpayers, and not just on the “billionaires” his commercials endlessly promise to tax. Not surprisingly, Brooks has been championed by socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), making him a Bernie Bro, if not technically DSA.
For that matter, I don’t know many regular working men who get millions of campaign funds from far-left sources, including many radical Muslim donors and the Soros family.
Then there's Brooks' financial history, which raises some serious questions of its own. His former mother-in-law sued him, alleging that he hid assets to avoid paying her more than $162,000. After the lawsuit became a campaign issue, Brooks settled it through a confidential agreement. When he operated a lawn care business, it reportedly went more than four years without workers' compensation insurance, an apparent violation of Pennsylvania law. During the COVID crisis, Brooks reportedly stated on applications for taxpayer-funded business loans that he had no outstanding financial judgments and had not defaulted on any loans, despite court records indicating otherwise. Knowingly making material false statements to obtain federal financial assistance can carry serious criminal penalties. And local court records show other financial issues, including foreclosures, liens, and debt collections.
Brooks recently made U.S. News and World Report for his scandals. Along with mentions of some of the above incidents, the magazine also listed: that Brooks called volunteer firefighters “scabs” and “sh!+bags” on social media, that he was allegedly a steward at a social club that had an unofficial whites-only policy, and that his Facebook posts featured far-right imagery.
Right now, my cell phone is blowing up with attack ads – and a few positive ads – from Rep. Mackenzie, Bob Brooks, and third parties focusing on the race. Brooks has gone all in with his regular working man play acting. He or his allies even has/have an ad that demeans college degrees – Brooks has none, while Rep. Mackenzie has an MBA from Harvard and a bachelor's. (Subtle, Bob.) Meanwhile, some of the Mackenzie attack ads exposing Brooks can be seen here and here. Rep. Mackenzie’s campaign X/Twitter feed may be seen here.
This race sort of reminds me of what happened in this very same district in 1998. Then, Democrat State Senate Roy Afflerbach ran against a credentialed businessman named Pat Toomey. Afflerbach largely ran as a regular working man against an unknown egghead. It didn’t work. In a year that saw the Democrats buck history and pick up seats in the House despite the Six-Year Itch under President Bill Clinton, Pat Toomey still won 55 percent of the vote.
But I guess “We’ll (Just Have to) See What Happens.”