\u201cThe thing that gives us life and hope and opportunity is Donald John Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n
Coming from a Democrat, that may sound odd, but for Democratic strategist T.J. Rooney, it\u2019s the key to winning back Pennsylvania congressional seats.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur house is still in disorder. Our tide is rising, and it\u2019s because of one person: Donald Trump,\u201d Rooney said, referring to how Democrats nationwide have performed on a Trump-free ballot.<\/p>\n
In the last election, Democrats saw surges nationwide, even taking local seats in deep-red states for the first time in decades.<\/p>\n
For the 2026 midterms, a trio of national nonpartisan political forecasters have Pennsylvania\u2019s 1st Congressional District of Brian Fitzpatrick; the 7th, with Ryan Mackenzie; Scranton\u2019s 8th, Rob Bresnahan; and the 10th, Scott Perry in Harrisburg, all in play to be flipped.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the seventh is more vulnerable because Ryan Mackenzie is a first-term member of Congress. When you are in your first term running for your second, that is when you are the most vulnerable,\u201d said Republican strategist Sam Chen.<\/p>\n
In the 8th District, Chen added that for Republicans to stay, they should keep the message local.<\/p>\n
\u201cSpeak to the issues that your district is having. Ignore the national kind of hype, hyped-up issues,\u201d he stressed.<\/p>\n
Northampton County Republican Committee head Glenn Geissinger says the lack of GOP enthusiasm in this past election was a wake-up call for the party.<\/p>\n
He does think the governor\u2019s race could change that in 2026, bringing out more Republicans who recently stayed home.<\/p>\n
However, Chen says that may not make up for President Trump not being on the ballot.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe president draws all the attention, the political landscape and the news. So because he\u2019s in office, you\u2019re going to have a higher number of Democrats come out, and because he\u2019s not on the ballot, you\u2019re going to have fewer Republicans coming out,\u201d he said of past elections.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThe thing that gives us life and hope and opportunity is Donald John Trump.\u201d Coming from a Democrat,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":51494,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[214,119,121,120,5523,836,433,2941,434],"class_list":{"0":"post-51493","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-allentown","8":"tag-_homepage_top_stories","9":"tag-allentown","10":"tag-allentown-headlines","11":"tag-allentown-news","12":"tag-carbon-county","13":"tag-election","14":"tag-lehigh-county","15":"tag-monroe-county","16":"tag-northampton-county"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51493","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=51493"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51493\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}