Scranton Mayor Paige Gebhardt Cognetti received a boost in her bid to potentially unseat Republican Rob Bresnahan in Pennsylvania\u2019s 8th Congressional District.<\/p>\n
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee announced Monday that Cognetti was added to the first round of the committee\u2019s \u201cRed to Blue\u201d program.<\/p>\n
Eli Cousin, a press secretary for the DCCC, declined to disclose the amount of money Cognetti will receive from the committee.<\/p>\n
Red to Blue is a highly competitive and battle-tested DCCC program that arms top-tier candidates with organizational and fundraising support to help them continue building winning campaigns, committee officials said. Additionally, through Red to Blue, the DCCC provides strategic guidance, staff resources, candidate trainings, fundraising support and more, DCCC officials added.<\/p>\n
\u201cPaige Cognetti fights political corruption wherever she sees it, because she believes that our government should work for the people,\u201d DCCC Chair Suzan DelBene said in a news release. \u201cShe\u2019ll be an independent voice in Congress that will lower costs for working people and put NEPA first.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cognetti \u2014 who officially launched her congressional campaign Sept. 2 \u2014 has served as Scranton\u2019s mayor since January 2020.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I first ran for Mayor, I ran as an Independent against the local Democratic machine to clean up City Hall and build a government that works for people,\u201d Cognetti said in a statement. \u201cNow I\u2019m running for Congress to take on a corrupt Washington that is leaving our community behind while self-serving politicians like Rob Bresnahan focus on how their votes will boost their stock portfolios instead of how they will impact families. Our costs keep rising, and we get sold out. Fundamental pieces of our economy and our children\u2019s futures are being needlessly and carelessly ripped away.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur message is resonating, which is why our campaign has earned the support of Governor Josh Shapiro and hardworking people across NEPA who are tired of the old way of doing things. When I get to Congress I will answer to Northeastern Pennsylvania, not to Washington. Public service is service for others, for your community, and for our country, not yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n
Before she can take on Bresnahan in the November general election, Cognetti is expected to face opposition in the Democratic primary in the spring.<\/p>\n
Retired state administrative officer Francis McHale of Scranton also seeks the Democratic nomination in the 8th District but has yet to file campaign finance reports with the Federal Election Commission. He said he will after he files his nomination petitions in March to appear on the May primary ballot, noting he\u2019s likely to self-finance his primary campaign. Democrat Eric Bryan Stone filed in October a statement of candidacy with the FEC but hasn\u2019t reported any campaign finances.<\/p>\n
Other candidates \u2014 Democratic and Republican \u2014 will have until mid-March to file to run in the primary.<\/p>\n
Bresnahan, a Luzerne County businessman who lives in Dallas Twp., narrowly defeated former Democratic U.S. Rep. Matt Cartwright in November 2024, earning 195,663 votes to the incumbent Democrat\u2019s 189,411.<\/p>\n
The 8th Congressional District includes all of Lackawanna, Wayne and Pike counties and parts of Luzerne and Monroe counties.<\/p>\n
Following through on a promise to do things differently, Cognetti, now in her third term as mayor, has breathed new life into Scranton by putting more cops on the beat and revitalizing the city\u2019s finances, committee officials said.<\/p>\n
Additionally, Cognetti\u2019s record stands in stark contrast to Bresnahan, who has made himself the poster child of D.C. corruption by breaking his promise to ban congressional stock trading and instead becoming one of the most active stock traders in all of Congress, DCCC officials added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scranton Mayor Paige Gebhardt Cognetti received a boost in her bid to potentially unseat Republican Rob Bresnahan in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":121127,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[201,182,803,139,28,178,180,179,181],"class_list":{"0":"post-121126","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-scranton","8":"tag-lackawanna-county","9":"tag-local-news","10":"tag-luzerne-county","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-pennsylvania","13":"tag-scranton","14":"tag-scranton-headlines","15":"tag-scranton-news","16":"tag-top-stories-stt"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121126"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121126\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/121127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}