Published July 16. 2026 02:45PM<\/p>\n
Bob Brooks, a longtime Bethlehem firefighter who retired last year and the current president of Pennsylvania Professional Fire Fighters Association, was a runaway winner in a four-person race for the Democratic nomination for the 7th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives. He will face incumbent Republican Rep. Ryan Mackenzie in the November general election.<\/p>\n
Brooks was a solid winner in Lehigh, Northampton and Carbon counties and also picked up a 100-plus-vote win in parts of Monroe County.<\/p>\n
Finishing second was Carbon County native and former Northampton County executive Lamont McClure, with 12,793 votes.<\/p>\n
Ryan Crosswell, who grew up in Pottsville and served as a federal prosecutor for 10 years, was third with 12,710 votes. Tallying 10,667 votes in fourth place was Carol Obando-Derstine, a former regional manager for U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, as well as a regional affairs director for PPL Electric Utilities.<\/p>\n
Mackenzie, who was unopposed, tallied 33,192 complimentary votes.<\/p>\n
The district includes all of Carbon, Lehigh and Northampton counties and parts of Monroe County, including the townships of Eldred, Polk and some of Ross.<\/p>\n
The breakdown of voting in those counties included:<\/p>\n
Carbon \u2014 Brooks, 1,585; McClure, 899; Crosswell, 842; and Obando-Derstine, 793<\/p>\n
Lehigh \u2014 Brooks, 10,758; Crosswell, 7,108; Obando-Derstine, 5,872; and McClure, 3,137<\/p>\n
Monroe \u2014 Brooks, 311; Obando-Derstine, 196; Crosswell, 163; and McClure, 115<\/p>\n
Northampton \u2014 Brooks, 13,257; McClure, 8,642; Crosswell, 4,597; and Obando-Derstine, 3,806<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Published July 16. 2026 02:45PM Bob Brooks, a longtime Bethlehem firefighter who retired last year and the current…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":239529,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,121,120],"class_list":["post-245713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245713","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=245713"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245713\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/239529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}