In 2019, Paige Cognetti launched her marketing campaign for mayor of Scranton, the place the incumbent had resigned from workplace earlier than pleading responsible to federal corruption expenses.
Wary of the county Democratic Party’s closed nominating course of, she ran as an impartial. That fall, she discovered herself in a courtroom with her rivals as county Democratic leaders sought to have the particular election reclassified, doubtlessly booting her and three different candidates off the poll.
“To sit there in a courtroom and have the local Democrats trying to essentially rig the election, it made me realize how right I was, that we needed to step up,” Cognetti advised NCS.
The problem to her bid failed, and Cognetti went on to turn into the first girl elected mayor of Scranton.
Now, in her bid to flip Pennsylvania’s eighth Congressional District, Cognetti is as soon as once more framing herself as a substitute for the politics of self-interest. She’s additionally referred to as on Democrats to have a forward-looking message in the event that they win again the US House this November.
“We would be mistaken if we took Democratic victory in 2026 as a mandate to go into some sort of impeachment process,” Cognetti stated. “What the American people need is to be able to afford to live and be able to feel confident that there is opportunity for themselves and their kids. That is what people are going to be out voting for.”
She’s difficult Rep. Rob Bresnahan, a freshman lawmaker who campaigned on banning congressional inventory buying and selling earlier than changing into certainly one of the most energetic inventory merchants in Congress throughout his first months in workplace. Bresnahan has stated his inventory trades have been managed by monetary advisors. In May 2025, the congressman introduced he was forming a blind belief and launched laws to ban congressional inventory buying and selling.
“Really, Rob Bresnahan recruited me into this race for Congress,” Cognetti stated. “It was not my plan, just like it wasn’t my plan to run in 2019. But I will not sit by and let the people of northeastern Pennsylvania have somebody representing them that is truly just there for themselves.”
It’s a message that’s resonating with Democrats as they proceed making an attempt to rebuild the party’s relationship with working-class voters. The district, situated in northeastern Pennsylvania, voted for President Donald Trump in all three of his presidential campaigns. But Bresnahan defeated Rep. Matt Cartwright with just below 51% of the vote in 2024, at the same time as President Donald Trump received practically 54% of the vote.
Samantha Bullock, a spokesperson for Bresnahan’s marketing campaign, pushed again on Cognetti and her allies’ framing of the race.
“Paige Cognetti would love this campaign to be about anything other than her failed leadership in Scranton,” Bullock stated in a assertion to NCS. “Rep. Bresnahan does not trade his own stocks, and Cognetti’s theatrics don’t change the fact that she is part of the Democrat machine that has failed Scranton for years.”
Bresnahan is certainly one of 4 Republican incumbents who Pennsylvania Democrats are targeting this November. Gov. Josh Shapiro endorsed the Democratic nominees in all 4 races, together with Cognetti, who ran unopposed.
In the eighth District, Democrats are hoping to make a connection between corruption in Washington, which helped gasoline their profitable efforts to flip the House in 2006 and 2018, and Americans’ affordability issues. They view Cognetti, who was simply elected to full phrases as mayor in 2021 and 2025 as a Democrat, as their greatest guess in a race considered as amongst the state’s best.
“She’s often been not afraid to buck her own party and to stand up for what she thinks is right, and that makes her really appealing to everyday voters who have felt often disenfranchised with either party,” stated Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. Austin Davis, who has endorsed Cognetti.
Cognetti has pledged to reject company PAC cash and referred to as for a ban on congressional inventory buying and selling.
“Her argument is really simple: It’s when politicians enrich themselves and their donors, working people pay the price,” stated Tiffany Muller, president of End Citizens United, a liberal advocacy group looking for to restrict the affect of cash in politics. The group has endorsed Cognetti.
Cognetti, an Oregon native who labored on former President Barack Obama’s first White House marketing campaign, left her job in the state auditor’s workplace to run in a particular election to fill the the rest of former Mayor Bill Courtright’s time period.
“When you have corruption, Democrats need to make sure that they are calling it out as they see it,” Cognetti stated. “And that includes when somebody in the Democratic Party does something wrong.”
Cognetti’s unofficial marketing campaign slogan was “Paige Against the Machine,” a nod to the ‘90s rock band Rage Against the Machine and her struggle against native Democratic leaders.
“She was tapping into a deeper feeling within the voters in Scranton,” J.J. Abbott, a Pennsylvania-based Democratic strategist, advised NCS. “They were just really tired of the good old boys’ network, and ‘the way things have always been done’ being the driving force for how decisions were made.”
If elected to Congress, Cognetti stated she needs to audit the federal authorities whereas additionally arguing Democrats ought to reverse elements of the “One Big Beautiful Bill” that the GOP handed final yr.
“We can’t hold dear some of the programs that we have,” she stated. “We certainly need to rescind the cuts from HR 1, but that doesn’t mean that Medicare and Medicaid are perfect.”