- [Announcer] From your public media studios, WVIA presents "Keystone Edition," a news and public affairs program that goes beyond the headlines to address issues in Northeastern and Central Pennsylvania.

This is "Keystone Edition."

- Hello, and welcome to the first "Keystone Edition" of WVIA's 2026-2027 broadcast season.

In this program, we'll focus on the upcoming midterm election, which is shaping up as another pivotal one nationwide, but especially here in Pennsylvania, and especially Eastern Pennsylvania.

As it has been for years now, Pennsylvania is an election battleground again.

The state doesn't have a U.S.

Senate race this time around, but it does have four hotly contested U.S.

House races.

And with the House only narrowly controlled by Republicans, who wins Pennsylvania's four congressional seats could really matter when it comes to deciding which party controls the House next year.

Besides that, we have a state House controlled narrowly by Democrats who want to expand their majority, and we have a state Senate controlled by Republicans that Democrats think they can win for the first time in decades.

And we have a very interesting governor's race.

We've invited as our main guest two distinguished political consultants, one Democratic, one Republican, to talk about the election and its implications.

We'll hear from them in a bit, but first we'll talk with WVIA's own Lydia McFarlane.

Normally, Lydia is WVIA's healthcare reporter, which is no small task, but for the last federal election and this one, she's put together our online reader survey.

In late June, we put the survey online asking people to comment on what issues matter most to them as the election approaches.

Lydia, talk about how you put together the survey.

- Thanks for having me, Borys.

So this survey we also ran in 2024, and both years we developed the survey based on the reporting of our beats.

So from my beat in healthcare, we know that issues like women's health and healthcare costs broadly are important.

From your beat, we know things like immigration and the economy are important.

So we gathered these top issues and let voters tell us what really matters to them heading to the polls this November.

- And these were all online, right?

They're forms that readers fill online, and we don't do a random sample.

We just let whoever wants to fill them out, fill them out.

Okay.

So it's not scientific in any way.

- Not scientific, and it's also not representative of our entire audience or coverage area.

We got a little bit more than 200 responses, but even still, that small sample had results consistent with both state and national polls.

- National polls.

So what struck you about the survey?

What did we find?

- So we found that top issues for voters that took our survey were healthcare, cost of living and inflation, the environment, specifically as it relates to data centers in rural areas, and just the economy broadly.

- And is there much difference between what we saw two years ago?

I don't think data centers were a big issue two years ago.

- Yeah, I was struck comparing the 2026 results with 2024.

Our top issues for voters in 2024 based on that survey were the environment and women's health, which I think was really reflective of the political environment at that point heading into the presidential election that November.

So we had, you know, the repealing of Roe v. Wade through the Dobbs decision in 2022 that Democrats were using as a big campaign issue for the presidential election, as well as the environment.

Climate change was something that was on the presidential ballot essentially.

So those were our two top issues, as opposed to this year, cost of living and the economy were really high up there.

- Did we see healthcare more this time around too?

- Yes, actually.

Healthcare was really high up for voters.

I've been covering a lot of the changes happening in the healthcare sphere, so changes to Medicaid, with big changes coming in January, and also the loss of Affordable Care Act subsidies, which folks who are covered by the ACA saw costs increase quite a bit this year with the loss of those federal subsidies.

- Okay, we also had a recent KFF, Kaiser Family Foundation Associated Press Voter Survey.

I wonder if you could talk a little bit about that.

Are the issues there similar?

- Yeah, absolutely.

So like you said, KFF worked with the AP and polled about 2,000 rural registered voters.

So this is a voting block.

- This is nationwide?

- Nationwide.

And this is voters that have been really important and a loyal base to Trump, but about half of those voters that they polled believe that the economy is actually worse off now than it was before Trump retook office.

And the implications of that, they're not necessarily going to go and vote for Democrats, but they could stay home.

They might be likely to stay home from the polls, which could, you know, have an impact on turnout for Republicans.

- But for the most part, rural voters still support Republicans, right, the majority of them?

- Yes, but the economy is top of mind for them as well.

Their top concerns are groceries, gas, and healthcare, and this poll did find that a lot of these voters are connecting Trump policies, like the war in Iran and tariffs, to their rising costs that they're seeing.

- Now you talked to some of the voters that filled out our survey, and I wonder how did you end up finding them?

How did they... - So part of our survey was an option to be contacted by a reporter, yours truly, and I was able to reach out to a few of them and speak to voters of different parties about why they chose what they chose, what's important to them, and what's motivating them to the polls this November.

- Now you talked to one Independent, right?

In this package that we have coming up, you talked to an Independent, a Republican, and a Democrat.

She interviewed these people with our videographer, Tim Novotny, and put together this video with these three voters who spoke their minds.

- I notice it mostly in grocery costs.

There are things I've noticed we're paying three times as much as we paid for a few years back.

We're managing all right.

We have probably cut back on a few things, but we're very thrifty.

- In, let's say, 2005, my grocery order was $35.

This same grocery order is about $150 today.

How could people live on that?

- I lived through the days in the early '80s when inflation was really high, where I got my first mortgage at 13.75%, and people asked, "How are you so lucky?

How did you get it so low?"

Other people were paying 15 and 15.5%.

- [Lydia] In WVIA's online voter issue survey, the top concerns were cost of living at 77.5%, healthcare at 76.9%, and the economy at 70.9%.

A separate statewide poll by Franklin & Marshall College found financial difficulty across party registration, 79% of Democrats, 74% of Republicans, and 71% of Independents, but affordability is not the only issue shaping their choices.

- I'd say ethics.

That underlies everything else for me.

I'd like to see elected officials more interested in the common good than not just for what benefits an individual legislator, but rather looking at what's good for the full community and what's good for the country and the world.

- Healthcare is huge to me.

I was exposed to biohazards while I was in Desert Storm.

The VA should be the best place for me to go.

However, I'm on that curve of veterans that was among the first to go over.

They don't have the facilities here to treat me.

- Personally, I don't believe in voting by mail.

I really don't.

But I think if somebody wants to do it, I think they should have the right, but I think you should have to go and do it.

- I choose candidates based on not only their policies, but as much as I can deduce from their character and their wisdom.

- I want what's going to serve America best.

I want people who are going to serve this country the best.

I want to go with who is going to be the best for these issues.

- Maybe we all agree on the desire to help people live a healthy lifestyle, but how to do that is, it sometimes gets down to policies that one prefers and the other party doesn't.

(gentle music) - Now let's introduce our other guests.

Brittany Crampsie is the founder of Brit Crampsie Communications, a public relations and campaign consulting firm.

Before that, she was the press secretary for the state Senate Democratic leader Jay Costa and the Senate Democratic Caucus.

She also served as managing editor at politicspa.com, the state's oldest political news site.

Christopher Nicholas runs... Welcome, Brit, by the way.

Christopher Nicholas runs Eagle Consultant Group, where he's carved out a 40-year career as an award-winning Republican political and public affairs consultant.

Chris also writes a widely read newsletter, which I read and have participated in, "Pennsylvania Political Digest," and he and Brit are preparing to launch a new podcast called "Red, White, and Read," a bipartisan book club.

Welcome, Chris.

- Thank you, Borys.

Nice to be here with both of you.

- They've done these shows a lot across the state, and do them pretty regularly, hundreds of times according to them, but this is their first time with us, and I couldn't be more delighted to have you here.

You heard that segment, and also Lydia talking about how the economy is kind of roiling the election.

Brit, can you talk a little bit about what influence that's having?

What's happening out there?

- Well, the economy is the number one issue, and, you know, if you're going into an election year and you want to guess what the top issue's gonna be, the economy is a safe start.

You know, people are gonna vote with their pocketbooks.

These are the things that are top of their minds.

There are other issues that may flare up here and there.

Lydia talked about abortion in the '22 election.

That was huge, but voters almost always come back to these pocketbook issues.

How much am I making, and how much of it is going out the door in gas, groceries, and utilities?

So you're seeing that in every single race.

Certainly up here, but in every corner where there's a competitive election, the candidates are talking about their vision to address the affordability crisis.

- So how is... Go ahead.

- No, I was going to say, two years ago it was the economy, but a different subset.

No one now is talking about jobs or unemployment 'cause we're at pretty much full employment.

We are talking about costs, okay?

And one of the reasons people see their costs going up is they don't buy dishwashers every week, right?

So I couldn't tell you what the price of a dishwasher was, but we've all filled up our car in the last week, and we've all gone to the grocery store, and if you're like me, you buy pretty much the same stuff every week, right?

So you see these costs going up incrementally every time you do your gas and your groceries.

and that becomes top of mind, but no one's talking about unemployment 'cause we have a good jobs picture.

So it's just a different slice of the economy this time, as opposed to '24.

- So whose advantage is this playing to?

Like is this helping the Democrats as they try to win all these seats, or how does this work?

- I think we're seeing it benefit Democrats, and maybe Chris will disagree with me here, because two years ago, Donald Trump ran on gas prices, on inflation, and promised to fix it.

Had a very successful year.

Obviously we're calling him President Trump again.

He's had two years to fix it, and we're looking at inflation that's the same, if not higher, gas prices that are the highest that they've been since the Iraq war, and voters are angry about that.

So it is an economic election, but it's also a referendum on what voters were promised two years ago.

So in this case, it lends itself toward the Democrats, but in the '22 midterm, we saw some backlash to Biden.

- So how are Republicans managing this?

'Cause they do have a story to tell, like the... - Yeah, so two years ago, the unpopular president was a Democrat, Joe Biden, and his vice president, Kamala Harris.

Now the unpopular president is a Republican.

So when Republicans talk about the economy, they talk about some of the bills they've passed, some of the initiatives, no tax on overtime, no tax on tips, no tax on certain amounts of Social Security income.

So those things apply to certain types of people.

If you're in a job that you don't get overtime, they don't really worry about that, or if you don't get tips, but some people do.

So it's a nuanced thing, but the pressure is more on the GOP because we are the party in power.

The president's a Republican, both chambers of the U.S.

Congress are run by Republicans.

Here in Pennsylvania it's split.

So the onus is always on the party in power, 'cause these races can turn into referendums on the leaders, so that's hurting us.

The thing that's helping us is the Democratic Party's big leftward lurch into democratic socialism.

So those to me are the two competing attitudes out there right now.

- Now, is there enough... We're a little over a month away from the election.

Is there still enough time to make that case, you know, for all these things that you talked about, basically the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and the things that are in it?

- Yeah, I mean, I think it depends kind of district by district.

We're gonna talk about the congressionals in a while, but incumbent Republican Brian Fitzpatrick in Southeast PA's First District, he was the one Republican who voted against the 1BB.

So the Democrats there had to come up with a different message, a different template.

In those other seats, we're gonna talk about District 7, 8, and 10.

It was different 'cause those Republicans voted for it.

So the Democrats this year have the easier message, and the more emotional message, and in politics, easier and emotional equals good, so Republicans have a harder message to put through.

Luckily, all things being equal, there's more money on the Republican side in congressionals than Democratic.

- It kind of strikes me as the same thing that we heard in 2024, was Biden thought he had a really good economic message and he had trouble getting that across, because people were still feeling the effects of whatever the economy was.

And in 2010, when they passed Obamacare, it's like, you know, "We think we did this great thing," but they never really got the message out about how great a thing it was.

- Voters are interested in what you've done for me lately.

You know, Republicans have had two years to right the ship on the economy, and at every turn, they've made it worse.

So I don't think the final four and a half weeks, five weeks here, they're gonna turn it around.

And if we look at Harrisburg, there are things that Republicans in power in the Senate could have done and have failed to do to improve the economic situation of people in the Northeast and across the state: increase the minimum wage, mandate paid family leave, cap rising utility costs.

They haven't done it, and you said Senate's been controlled by Republicans for 30 years.

I don't think they're gonna do it in the next 34 days.

- So it's interesting that President Trump gets a lot of heat for the economy, but then Governor Josh Shapiro does not.

- [Borys] I was gonna raise that.

Yeah.

- He's the guy in charge of Pennsylvania, so how can my Democratic friend say the national economy is bad, but the state one is good?

We in Pennsylvania, I'll use my own term, we've been saddled with Democratic governors for 20 of the past 24 years, and for 12 years straight.

So if you want to change, Borys, the change is voting for a Republican governor finally in Pennsylvania.

- Gas prices are very much a product of federal choices, this war of choice with Iran.

There's very little that Josh Shapiro can do to bring down the barrel price of... - You wouldn't know that listening to him.

- The barrel price of oil.

Pennsylvania is a state that is growing.

Pennsylvania has a lot of opportunity, and with more Democrats elected in the state, we could do even more.

Chris complains about the saddling with Democratic governors, but they're all duly elected and reelected.

This is not a situation that the voters didn't have a say in.

- But they're blaming Trump.

Trump's approval rating in the last Franklin & Marshall College poll was 27%.

Josh Shapiro's was 47%.

I mean, that seems quite disparate.

- That's why I brought it up a few minutes ago, of course, right?

I was kind of reading your mind there.

So look, voters always want to have their cake and eat it too, right?

And it's our job sometimes to give them a plate to do that, or sometimes to try and take that plate away from them.

So for the Republicans, it's talking about, well, how can things be so bad when Josh Shapiro's out there saying they're so good?

So, you know, which story do you want to believe today?

- Well, Josh Shapiro has cut taxes five times, including most recently with the working families tax credit as part of the July ultimate budget.

- All by himself he apparently did that.

He waved a wand and it happened, Borys.

- Along with his friends in the House Democratic Caucus who took over in 2022.

(Borys laughing) - The Senate Republicans had nothing to do with it?

- [Chris] Apparently not.

- We drug them kicking and screaming to cut your taxes.

But Donald Trump chooses this war with Iran, your gas prices go up.

He pushes the cut in ACA subsidies, your health insurance cost goes up.

Leadership in Pennsylvania through Josh Shapiro is cutting your taxes, lowering your prices.

And I think that voters do understand the difference between... - What prices is Josh Shapiro lowering that somehow are not being raised nationally?

It's the same prices, okay?

He's trying to have his cake and eat it too, that say, "The things I do in Pennsylvania I'm making terrific, but all these other Donald Trump things."

And I'm not blaming him for trying, but that's just kind of how Josh Shapiro operates.

- Let me ask you this, because you raised the war in Iran, and we've heard the president say that once the war in Iran is over, you know, prices will drop like a rock.

Do you think people understand that this war is necessary, and maybe they understand that this war is necessary, or maybe they think that it's not necessary.

I don't know.

Polling seems to show that they don't want this war, right?

- I think there's disagreements about the necessity of it.

I think if you ask the average voter, "Why are we at war in Iran?"

most people aren't gonna know.

We don't have a clear agenda there.

We're getting mixed stories from the Trump administration.

Congress continues to try to rein him in.

Even with his own party, this is not popular.

I don't think it's popular with the average voter, but gas prices are so intimately tied to it, so in the ways that voters understand this war as an impact at the pump, they dislike it.

I don't think you see a lot of advocates for it in your average voter base.

- I think voters would agree that they don't want Iran to become a nuclear power.

That would be really bad news for us and our allies.

They also don't want higher gas prices.

So again, I'm gonna go back to my, "Voters want to have their cake and eat it too."

So they want to stop Iran from doing these bad things, but if it means higher gas prices, well, then you lose a bunch of people, because they're like, "Nah, my gas prices are more important to me than something happening, you know, 3,000 miles away in a country I'm not quite sure I could point to on a map."

But overall, I don't think people want nuclear armed Iran, right?

They're a problem in the region and the country.

But they also want lower and more predictable gas prices.

- I'm not a geopolitical expert.

I'm definitely more of a Pennsylvania person, but we've heard for generations that Iran is 48 hours away from having a nuclear weapon, so the urgency here from the Trump administration is kind of hard to believe.

And I've seen a lot of polling on issues from voters, what is gonna make them turn out, what they're voting on.

The Iran war doesn't come up a single time.

Gas prices do.

- Your party's being accused now of being democratic socialists, and interestingly, there was a poll in the last couple of days saying that a lot of Pennsylvanians are comfortable being called democratic socialists.

Is this a problem, being called democratic socialists?

- I think we have bigger problems than name-calling right now, but when you talk... - It's not name-calling.

They agree with it.

It's not name-calling if they agree with what you're saying they are.

- The people that we're talking about running in a lot of these races, and I know we're going to get to them soon, they are Democrats, members of the Democratic Party.

Is there overlap in some of the ideals?

Yes, but they're not such scary things.

It's higher wages for workers, affordable, accessible healthcare, a government that uses your tax dollars to work for working families instead of protecting the uber wealthy and these corporations that are... - It's abolishing ICE.

It's getting rid of border controls.

It's, you know, the country... - The border to Maryland is secure.

I think we're all right here in Pennsylvania.

- The country being run by folks like Bernie, AOC, and Mamdani.

They're so well-known... - The three most popular politicians in America right now.

- Is that right?

- That is true.

- They're so well-known I don't have to use their entire names.

I can use first names, last names, or nicknames.

- [Brit] Madonna, Beyonce, AOC are very popular right now.

- Are there that many differences between this year and 2024 other than who the incumbent is?

- Well, the big difference to me when you get into the weeds is the electorate's gonna be very different, okay?

Turnout is highest in a presidential year, and then in the odd years, it goes way down.

Well, there are some... You ever see a survey in a presidential year a week out, and there's 5% of the people who are still undecided?

And you think, "Who the heck are these people?"

Well, there's that movie, "She's Just Not That Into You."

That's how some voters are.

They're just not that into voting.

So without a presidential race, without a senate race, it becomes less top of mind, less of the political news gets into their Facebook feed, and they're talking over the fence post with their neighbors.

So it's just very predictable.

Turnout is just like this.

- There aren't that many people out there saying, agreeing with, pretending that the president's on the ballot the way he asked at the Republican Convention.

- I think that's a good try.

I don't think it's really gonna end up affecting a lot of things, but you have some people who are disillusioned on both sides of the aisle, and they show that disillusionment by not participating.

And then there are some people are like, "It's just not important enough for me to do that."

There literally are people, Borys, who only vote once every four years in a presidential race, and the rest of the time they are underground.

- How do you think Trump is affecting the election?

His approval rating, does it matter that much?

- The president's approval rating matters all the time, regardless of who the president is.

The bigger problem for Trump is his name ID.

His approval's also softening.

So you have fewer people saying they strongly approve of what he's doing, and more saying they somewhat approve.

So he is losing some of the levers he could normally use.

The one thing on the national level writ large that Republicans do is we do seem to have about a three to two funding advantage.

That may not be necessarily true in the congressional races we're gonna talk about in a minute, but overall.

So how that mitigates it, we don't know yet.

- Trump is a unique specimen, and Chris is right in that the numbers... - I am?

Please note that for me, Borys.

- First and only one.

- [Borys] I'm writing it down right now.

- Only one tonight.

So presidential years always... - I get that twice a year, so I'm checked off for both times this year.

- Always the high watermark of turnout.

But when Trump is on the ballot, it's different people.

It's not that all the same people turn out every presidential year, and the same people turn out in the midterm years.

It's a different body.

It's a different electorate.

So Trump was very successful in '24 in turning out people that don't typically vote in this area, in the Lehigh Valley, in the rural Southwest, and a lot of those are formerly Democratic voters who are either no longer Democrats or not voting for Democrats, but were motivated to turn out by Trump and for Trump.

He himself is a poor surrogate for downballot candidates.

He doesn't have a great success record with that.

He doesn't do it a whole lot.

He'll hold an enormous rally, but he won't ask you to really turn out for anybody else.

He's not able to take his own appeal and deliver that for other candidates in the way that other presidential surrogates have been able to do the way that Barack Obama did or Ronald Reagan did.

- Every Republican on the ballot with Trump won in 2024, so I would push back a little bit on that.

The other thing... - When he was on the ballot.

- Yeah, the other thing to remember too... Well, remember Barack Obama won in '08 and then got creamed in 2010 when he wasn't on the ballot.

So the other thing I would bring up is that this is the first election of modern history, Borys, where the amount of registered voters in the state are essentially even.

Among active voters, those that actually vote, Democrats have like a 25 or 30,000 vote advantage.

Back when our good friend Barack Obama was president, that was closer to a million.

So that to me is an interesting new development.

Now, voter registration does not equal how you vote, but it is an interesting indicator.

- We're gonna talk a little bit about the congressional races, but first I want to talk about the one around here, and that one of the four hot congressional races right now is in our backyard.

We have incumbent Republican Congressman Rob Bresnahan facing a stiff challenge from Democratic Scranton mayor Paige Cognetti.

I sat down recently with both of them, and they talked about why they're running and the issues in the race.

(bright tones) Can you talk about what worried you so much about the country, the state of the country that you decided to run for Congress when you were still running for reelection for mayor?

- Yeah.

Not having a floor underneath families is a real problem.

So healthcare, education, SNAP.

We have so many folks that were already struggling before that Big Beautiful Bill vote.

Now we have even more people that are having trouble getting food on the table.

We have nurses who now have a cap on the amount they can borrow.

They're not sure if they're gonna finish their nursing degrees.

- What worried you so much about the state of the country and what continues to worry you about the state of country when you decided to run for Congress and now for a reelection?

- Well, I think you have to go back to 2024 when I decided to throw my hat into the ring.

I was born in Northeastern Pennsylvania.

I was raised here.

I built my companies here.

My family is here for five generations.

So everything about why I decided to seek public office was because I love my country and I love Northeastern Pennsylvania.

- What do you think in your background makes you a good choice for voters?

- Well, I think it goes back to I never pursued a life, and, you know, I don't have a political science degree.

I have a business administration degree from the University of Scranton, but I came from the real world.

I developed distressed properties in Downtown Pittston.

I came into my family business at a very young age.

Then I had Democrats, I had Republicans, I had union, I had non-union, different employees and relationships, and we were always able to put our hat on what was best for the entity, best for the company, and best foot forward for whatever we were advocating for.

- What in your background says that you're the right person for this job?

- So I've been mayor for seven years.

I was on the school board before that, and then was working for the Auditor General auditing school districts before becoming mayor.

You have to be able to go in and do the hard work of digging in, and we know that local government really matters.

It matters that the agencies in D.C.

and the Congress in D.C.

understand how to connect what they can do for local government with actionable items for local government.

- So if you're elected January 3rd, you get sworn in, what's the first thing you do?

- The first thing we need to do in a new Congress in January 2027 is put the floor back under healthcare.

- Repeal the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, or just portions of it, or?

- I think we need to make sure that the trillion dollars in Medicaid cuts are restored.

We have to reform healthcare.

That is absolutely true, but we cannot do it by gutting a trillion dollars and throwing off millions of people from their healthcare.

We need to put the floor underneath our healthcare system again.

That should be H.R.

1.

- You've been criticized a lot for another healthcare issue, and that is the vote on the One Big Beautiful Bill Act because of its projected cuts to Medicaid and SNAP.

Can you talk a little bit about why you voted for that, the precautions that are built into it, and also, you know, some of the other things, other reasons that you voted for it?

- So I think when you think about doubling the child tax deduction, you talk about $12.5 billion for air traffic control modernization, you talk about the no tax on tips, the no tax on overtime, the no tax on Social Security, those are tangible benefits.

As for the protections inside of it, the work requirements, if there is someone that deserves Medicaid and is entitled to Medicaid and they aren't getting it, I want them to immediately call our office.

And this was designed to protect the system from the waste, fraud, and abuse inside of the program.

- What did you go into thinking you could accomplish as a freshman congressman?

What do you think you've accomplished?

- Sometimes legislation moves frustratingly slow.

Now you need to be able to get to consensus, and you need to be able to get to 218 votes.

Something that I'm really proud to be a part of is the bipartisan group, the Problem Solvers Caucus.

Republicans and Democrats got together to talk about the future of artificial intelligence.

So getting able to reach across the aisle and be able to come up with legislative solutions and actually participate in a lawmaking exercise is exciting.

- We need to also tackle corruption.

The American people are begging for reform in D.C.

They are begging for things like term limits.

We have an anti-corruption platform in our campaign.

It's on our website, paigeforpa.com.

It includes a true ban on congressional stock trading.

Importantly, it has term limits in it.

The American people really are asking for reform, and I want to go down there and reform in Congress, and it's gonna be hard.

There are a lot of people that want to keep things the way they are.

We have to fight that.

We gotta fight the lobbyists that want the status quo.

- Okay, maybe it's just me because I'm up here, but this seems to be the race of the four congressional races, and we'll go through the others, that seems to be getting the most national attention.

I've seen stories on some of the other races, but this one is the one that really seems... What's going on here?

- So the way I describe it is of the four hot seats, Bucks County where I grew up, the Lehigh Valley here in South Central PA where we both live.

With Paige Cognetti, I think the Democrats, of those four, found their strongest nominee.

She's an elected official.

She didn't have a primary, but she is saddled, I'll use that word again, with, to me, the best Republican congressional district of those four.

So how those two things- - Best how?

- Just in terms of performance and Trump performance and that type of thing.

Again, Bresnahan is there because he beat an incumbent two years ago, so good for him.

That's why these are seats we have to hold now.

So that to me is the important part here.

The other thing I think about is in the rest of the Eighth District, where we are now, what is the anti-Scranton feeling?

Is there still one based on how that city has been over the years?

Has that dissipated?

I don't know.

Cognetti is leaning into the fact that she's mayor of Scranton, obviously lives there.

But that's what I'm looking at, how those three things kind of push and pull against each other.

- Since taking office, Congressman Bresnahan has made misstep after misstep and has gotten a lot of national attention for that, and I think seeing him on the ballot again this year is driving some of that attention.

So this district has one of the highest rates of poverty of the congressional districts in Pennsylvania, and right out of the gate, Bresnahan is taking a private helicopter to and from D.C.

and to events around the country to big-ticket fundraisers.

That's not the... - [Chris] It's his own helicopter though, right?

- [Brit] It is indeed.

Yeah.

- He just happens to have a helicopter, so.

- I think the average voter doesn't happen to have a... - Are you trying to help your cause?

- Doesn't happen to have a helicopter.

In fact, the average American will not be on a plane within 12 months of now or six months from now.

Air travel is not an average experience, let alone private.

- I think Democrats are making a big deal of it 'cause they want to try and intimate that it's someone else's helicopter who's doing him a favor.

He happens to own a helicopter.

- I'll point out here that Matt Cartwright owned an airplane, by the way.

- And lost.

And lost.

- We didn't hear anything about that after 10 years.

- And lost.

Yeah.

- The next major misstep from Bresnahan that got huge national attention, when he was running, he also ran against corruption, and he said that he was going to stop stock trading when he was in Congress because it was inappropriate to be a member of the body that sets the rules for the stock market, to have insider information on large federal contracts, and then he immediately starts trading stocks again.

And when pressed about it by reporters up here, he says... - By this guy.

This is the guy who broke that story.

- He says, "What?

Do you want me to be poor?"

Just offensive move.

Yes, lose all of his money, lose his helicopter.

I mean, this is somebody that is not understanding the district, is not understanding the moment right now, and absolutely cannot represent in Washington.

- I'll point out in fairness to him that the congressman denies that he's ever consulted with his financial advisors about what stocks to buy, and says I have nothing to do with the stocks.

- And it's come out recently... - And he's also gotten on board on a stock trading ban.

- And it's come out recently that the Cognettis' fancy-schmancy upscale grocery store does not accept food stamps.

So when you have them in this studio in a couple weeks, they can go back and forth on helicopters versus food stamps.

- Let's talk a little bit about the other races.

I raised these mainly because I think that people sometimes think that the whole world revolves around their congressional candidate.

They certainly think about Congress as a whole and their congressman differently.

But what will happen in these other three races, you know, say Paige were to win, you know, the mayor were to win, the Republicans win the other three seats, maybe the House doesn't flip.

So what are the other three?

- So there are three toss-up congressional districts in Pennsylvania, this one, the neighboring one in the Lehigh Valley, the Seventh District versus Ryan Mackenzie.

- [Borys] That's Ryan Mackenzie's the incumbent Republican.

- And then the district where we live, the Tenth, which is South Central PA, Harrisburg, Carlisle, and York City, which is represented by Scott Perry.

So the reason we have two of them is 'cause we flipped Seven and Eight two years ago.

Bresnahan beat an incumbent.

Ryan Mackenzie beat Susan Wild, who had been there, I guess for three terms.

So we're kind of, in this case, a victim of our own success, because we now have more seats to defend in the first place.

A lot of times midterm congressional races move because of the national environment, okay?

So sometimes you get boosted by that, and sometimes you get deflated by that.

So that's what we're gonna find out in the next five weeks.

- The other one, you want to touch on the other one.

- The other one, Bucks County, Pennsylvania 1 where I grew up.

Brian Fitzpatrick has been there since 2016.

The Democrats there think they have a chance.

I think they're kind of barking up the wrong tree, but, you know, hope springs eternal for them.

So like I said, three of those four Democratic challengers have, to me, not been that impressive.

Cognetti is, to me, the most impressive of those four.

- Let me point out something here.

We talked a little bit about this beforehand, is that the very first female congresswoman from Pennsylvania was from Scranton.

Her name was Veronica Grace Boland, and she was elected to replace her husband for the last two months in a special election in 1942.

Now, there's not been one since.

There've only been 12 in all in Pennsylvania, and Paige Cognetti and Janelle Stelson are trying to do something.

Well... - Janelle Stelson in Tenth District is correct.

- There's never been a woman elected in that district, or in that region to Congress.

Do you think that's something that works against, is gonna work against them?

- I think in the year 2026, it shouldn't matter, but we're still working to break glass ceilings.

I'm sure there are some voters that are gonna vote in part because of that.

I think it would be a great sign for the next generation of women running for office.

You know, every time you see a woman succeed, the next one thinks it's more likely and is more likely to run.

It's very hard to recruit women to run for office.

Statistically, you ask a man to run for office, you ask him one time, and he says yes.

He's going to file his petition signatures.

On average... - And that's actually one of the things that I found when I was doing the research for that, is not only are there few women elected to Congress, there are few women who run.

- On average, you have to ask a woman seven times to run for office before she says yes, and that's a consultant coming in.

- [Borys] That's an interesting stat.

- That's an organization like EMILYs List or Run for Something that recruits women to run for office and recruits first-time candidates to run for office.

It's hard to get women into this, because they don't see as many women succeeding.

It continues on and on.

So there's generational significance in electing Janelle Stelson and Paige Cognetti.

- So I don't want to jump ahead, but interestingly in modern history, the Democratic Party in Pennsylvania has never, never run a woman for governor.

Pennsylvania this year was Stacy Garrity.

- Stacy's the first one to run.

- [Chris] Second one.

Barbara Haferman in 1990.

- Barbara Haferman, that's right.

- So we have now put up a woman for the second time.

- [Borys] Barbara switched to Democrats later, by the way, right?

- Many, many years later, because we wouldn't give her the nomination for governor again in 2002.

So the Democrats like to talk a big story, but they haven't yet seen fit to even nominate a woman for governor.

So Pennsylvania this year, if you want to make some history, you can elect Stacy Garrity the first female governor of Pennsylvania, which would be more important, I think, if she were a liberal, but she's a conservative, so my friends like this don't bring it up a whole lot.

- I think it might be interesting to point out that Republicans are not supporting Stacy Garrity.

There was polling a week ago.

One in four Republican voters don't know who she is.

- [Chris] They're gonna for her still.

- I don't know if that's an impressive statement.

She has raised about $1 million to Josh Shapiro's 36 over the last period.

Republicans, wonderful that she got through the primary, that they cleared for her, but they're not backing up behind her now, and I wonder if there's a gender dynamic there.

- [Borys] What's that about?

- I think it's hard to run against an incumbent and raise money, because people, especially in the governor's level, there's a lot of funders think about, "Well, who's gonna be governor next year?

Do I want to take a chance on this?"

In legislative races, state and national, it's kind of a different story 'cause they're one of 50 or 203 or 435.

There's only one governor.

Regardless of how much money she has raised or not raised, and regardless of how much money Shapiro has raised or not raised, she's still the better choice for Pennsylvania.

- Is history part of that too?

Because, you know, historically Pennsylvania governors serve eight years at a time.

The only exception in the last, since World War II, is... - Tom Corbett back in 2014.

- Tom Corbett.

Right, yeah.

- So again, I'll go back to what I said before, if you want to change, we've had Democratic governors for 20 of the past 24 years, so.

- And voters don't seem to want to change here.

Chris says it's difficult to recruit to run against an incumbent, but in 2014 when Democrats needed to find somebody to run against then incumbent Tom Corbett, it was like a record breaking field of five candidates, and they were excellent candidates.

They were people with cabinet-level experience.

They were members of Congress.

They were state-elected official.

- One went to jail later, so I wouldn't count him, Rob McCord, as big time.

- He was state treasurer, so statewide office-holder.

- And one, Tom Wolf bought his election with a $10 million gift to himself, so it worked.

- Well, at least the primary.

- It worked.

It worked.

If you have $10 million and you want to run for governor, there's the template here.

- If the incumbent is doing a poor job, it is not difficult to recruit somebody to run against him.

If the incumbent is doing by and large a great job, it's hard to get somebody to run against them, and that's the situation that Stacy Garrity is up against.

- Yeah, well, let's turn just a little bit to the state House and Senate races.

We have the Democrats in charge by three votes in the House, and the Republicans in charge by four votes in... Four votes or three votes?

- Just two seats, four votes.

- Two seats.

Yeah.

So let's start with the Senate, mainly because you know who the last guy was who had, the last Democrat who was Senate president pro tempore?

- Bob Mellow.

Yeah.

- Bob Mellow.

Yeah.

- Lackawanna County is owned by Mellow, who was in office for how long, before he went to jail on federal corruption charges?

- 40 years.

- 40 years.

Okay.

- 40 years in office.

- Okay.

- So you're working on obviously the... Can you talk a little bit about that first?

And then tell me why you think Democrats can flip the Senate and what happens if they do?

- This is my favorite topic.

- How long do we have?

- I couldn't wait until we got here.

So as you mentioned in my bio, I was the press secretary for the Senate Democratic Caucus and Leader Jay Costa for five years, and then started my consulting company, at which point I picked up the Pennsylvania Senate Democratic Campaign Committee as a client.

It's the umbrella organization for all of the races to elect Democrats to the state Senate.

So in 2016, when I started with the Senate Democratic Caucus, we had 16 of 50 members.

It was a low watermark for the chamber, and we have had- - Right.

Good job.

- Oh, thank you.

Net wins every cycle since then.

The Senate Democrats now have 23 seats in the chamber after flipping an historic race in Lancaster last year in a special election.

In a seat that Donald Trump won by 17 points, we won the special election and elected a Democrat there for the first time ever.

With just two seats away, we're looking at four seats that are currently held by incumbent first-term Republicans in districts that Josh Shapiro won four years ago and is likely to win again.

So these are also interestingly underlain by the congressional districts that we already talked about.

A seat up here, Senate District 40, represented by Rosemary Brown, we have a challenge from Brian Wrightson.

In the Lehigh Valley, in the Bob Brooks seat, where Ryan Mackenzie is the incumbent, we have a challenge there.

In Bucks County, where Chris was talking about the congressional race, we have a seat there, and then neighboring in Montgomery and Berks County.

Districts that are going to be really geographically impacted by Governor Shapiro's performance, congressional turnout, and then when we move further down the ballot, really competitive House seats.

So Democrats have a real shot at this.

We need to flip just two seats, and... - Because if you flip two, it'll be tied.

- 25/25.

- The lieutenant governor will be the deciding vote.

- Does tiebreak on all procedurals.

- If they're reelected.

And I would point out in her campaign speech here that all of these Republican incumbents that are supposedly so imperiled now all won four years ago when Josh Shapiro was on the ballot and won 58-42.

Three of them, I believe, were in the House before that, so they're new to the Senate, but not new to the House.

And in that terrific victory in Lancaster County in the special election back in 2025, I saw Brittany like three days later, and she was of course still sky high after that victory.

And I reminded her that what happens now is because that fellow James Malone is now a member of their caucus, they have to go totally out for him now, 'cause he's now an incumbent.

And I said, "That's gonna be a huge time sink and a huge money sink."

So the latest polls that come out showed her James Malone, a newish incumbent, only at 45%, and that 45% incumbents usually lose.

So it's a challenge for them.

They not only have to flip two, they have to hold the one in a seat that Trump won by 64%, 66.

- 17 points.

- So in specials, specials are special, and the turnout was much lower.

So with a regular turnout... So to me, I think that flips, and Democrats have to win three.

- Maybe, but... - That's true.

Maybe.

- Well, but let me point out here that in August there was a House seat in Butler County, and that is not blue turf anymore, and that was a heavily Trump district, a heavily Republican district, and a Democrat won that seat.

- Well, we're gonna try and win it back.

The Republican there, Scott Timko, is a client of mine now, so hopefully we're gonna turn that back.

And that's another thing, like the Lancaster County seat, it should be a red seat.

Turnout's different in a special.

Now we have more regular turnout.

But I agree with Brittany.

The state Senate really is the barn burner here in Pennsylvania in 2026.

- And special elections are special.

The turnout is very different.

The runway is much shorter.

You likely don't even have time to get on TV in a race like that.

But what we're looking at going into 2026's election is an environment very similar to 2018.

So in 2018, you have a popular governor in Tom Wolf, excuse me, running for reelection.

You have a referendum midterm election for Donald Trump.

And in 2018, the Senate Democrats flipped five seats, five seats that were very similar in Democratic performance.

In fact, those seats in five... - Most of them are Southeast PA, which is the strong point for state Democrat.

- Four in the Southeast, one in the Southwest.

Demographically, these seats look very similar, and Democratic performance-wise, these seats are even better than the five that we flipped in 2018.

So, I mean, this is a very possible situation, and Republican... - How many hundreds of times have you said that this year, Brittany, that it's very possible?

- A couple hundred times.

But net two, when we're looking at an environment that's even stronger than a year where we net five, is the best place the Senate's been in since the '90s.

- So 2018 was the midterm of Trump one.

Now we're in 2026, which is the midterm of Trump two, and if past is prologue, then that could be what's coming down the pike.

Those incumbent Republican state senators now are just that.

They are incumbents with the power of incumbency.

Four years ago when Josh Shapiro rolled to the governorship, they were not incumbent.

- Not as well-known.

- So that's kind of the, like I said, the yin and the yang of politics in PA.

- Let's talk a little about polling.

A lot of what we're talking about is based on polling.

We've certainly seen a fair number of polls in Pennsylvania already in this cycle, including a couple independent polls in the congressional races.

I talked on Zoom recently with the state's two leading pollsters about what they do and how it's becoming more difficult to get accurate polls.

(bright tones) - These are terms I'd ask my student, "Landline?

Phone book?"

And I get glazed-over looks.

(dramatic music) I say this to my friends in the industry, that I didn't realize how good I had it.

So when I started polling, you know, over 30 years ago, everybody had a landline.

We knew where those landlines were.

In the '90s when I started polling, those old days with phone books and landlines, we'd get about 30% response rate.

Those numbers have dropped dramatically.

It might be down in the low single digits.

Caller ID, of course, has played a gigantic role, seeing who's calling.

And I remember growing up, I'd grab the phone.

I had no idea who was calling, so I'd pick it up, right?

And if you can see who it is, I was like, "Oh, maybe I don't want to do it."

There's also a trust change.

There's scams.

There's much more concern about that than there was in the past.

- Almost no one does it that way anymore.

Landlines are much rarer.

People now do a lot of things on the internet, and in fact, data collection over the internet has exploded.

(uptempo music) And then the way we sampled started to change.

And right now, many of our samples are drawn from lists.

Our voter samples are drawn from the state's voter registration list.

We actually mail postcards to people to let them know we're calling, and then we follow up with phone calls, we follow up with emails.

If we have an email address, we follow up with text messages.

So, you know, maybe 10, 15 years ago, an interviewer could do two to four interviews an hour, depending on the length.

Now, it takes about four hours to do an interview, just because no one answers their phone.

- People should have expectations about polls that are realistic.

A sample is a small group.

We're talking about a big group.

There's always gonna be some degree of error in that.

For example, I've had polls where I've said one candidate's winning by a point, and they lose by a point.

In my mind, we had a great poll.

- Because if they weren't, you know, if elected officials were not hearing it through these kinds of mechanisms, where would they be hearing it from?

Well, probably from their biggest donors or the people that are closest to them, and that is a select group of people.

So when done properly, polls give a voice to what voters are thinking.

- Chris, you do polling.

- I do.

I was flashing back there when they talk about the olden times that maybe Brittany doesn't remember, but the first poll I did in Pennsylvania was 35 years ago.

- [Borys] Arlen Specter?

- It was before Specter, but it was for a local race.

But one of the ways we keep track of metrics is how many complete surveys we get in an hour, and I had five and a half that first time.

You know, I couldn't get even half of that these days.

So now you get closer to 3/4 to one per hour.

So because you're on the phone more hours, that costs more money.

Please, I beg your viewers, Borys, if they get a call from a pollster on their landline or their cell phone, take it.

It's a fun, informative 7 to 12 minutes of your life, right?

It's important, okay?

The problem that we in the political industry have is with these independent polls done by colleges or media folks, there's no downside if they're wrong, whereas if I'm working with a client or Brittany's working with a client and the polling is wrong, then there's downside.

There's also too much emphasis on the horse race numbers, you know, who's ahead, Smith versus Jones, as opposed to the bigger issues.

But, you know, I tell people all the time, if you're bored with Pennsylvania politics, wait six months, it'll change.

- All right, let's talk a little bit about the governor, real quick about the governor race, and we have about three and a half minutes.

This is not a close race right now.

The polling favors him, and I think in the last week or so, we started seeing what that means in terms of what he can do for others.

He's started to spend time, he issued the... - Gave a lot of money to Brittany's operation there.

- Well, that's right, and he put out his endorsements in the House and the Senate races this morning.

- Did he endorse any Republicans, or were they all Democrat?

I'm not sure how newsy that is, Democrat governor endorses Democrats.

- Well, yes, but he's clearly emphasized... I think he thinks he's a shoe-in now, and, you know, he's spending time on the other races.

Let's assume things go well for him.

The Democrats do well in Pennsylvania.

They flip the Senate.

What are the implications for him right now in terms of his status and his presidential aspirations?

- Well, it's not really a matter of if Shapiro's going to win.

They're taking this very seriously.

They're running hard.

It's a matter of by how much and where he's gonna rack up his victory, because he will have coattails in regions like up here in the Lehigh Valley in the Southeast, and he's fighting for the trifecta, and he's funding the trifecta.

Governor Shapiro is in more than seven figures into flipping the Senate and expanding the majority in the House to truly unlock the agenda that he's running on this time and that he ran on four years ago.

- He did that in 2022 as well, just not as much.

- So if you want to understand the implications... - Yeah, he wasn't running for president.

- He's not running for president now.

In 1992, Democrats take control of the Senate, and the first thing that they do in hours after they take control of the chamber is pass the Children's Health Insurance Program, CHIP, that becomes a model for the nation in providing health insurance for children.

- [Chris] It's a bipartisan vote.

- Republicans didn't do it until Democrats took control of the gavel, and that's the kind of pro-working family, pro-family policies that you see in a Democratic trifecta.

- This is all very poll-tested language she's using right now.

So Josh Shapiro is at war with the only other statewide elected Democrat, John Fetterman.

They both have the same very strong position on Israel.

Fetterman gets a lot of grief for it.

Shapiro doesn't.

If he gets reelected and tries to go on the national stage, he stumbled two years ago when he was up for VP with Kamala Harris.

That all was a total cluster you know what.

So the challenge for him now is his party is moving rapidly to the left, rapidly anti-Israel, and quite frankly, too openly even anti-Semitic.

So if you're a Jewish fellow like Shapiro is and you're a strong proponent of Israel, quite frankly, you're in the wrong party.

That's the Republican Party today.

It is not the Democratic Party today.

So if you're asking about what he does afterwards, if you reelect him this time, what he's gonna do is leave and go run for president.

You can't run for president from Harrisburg.

You have to go to New Hampshire, South Carolina, Iowa, Nevada, where the Democrats go.

So that's what you get if you reelect Josh Shapiro.

He leaves.

- All right.

We're out of time.

That's our show.

I hope you enjoyed it.

I want to thank our guests, Brittany Crampsie and Chris Nicholas, for appearing.

Really had a good time here.

- Me too.

Yeah.

- It's a terrific hour.

- Thank you also to our studio audience for joining us and to our viewers.

You make it all happen with your support.

Remember, the election is November 3rd.

Please be sure to vote.

It really does make a difference.

Thanks, and have a good evening.