As Republican incumbents in purple Pennsylvania battled strong political headwinds this November, they were forced to choose a tack — hew closely to President Donald Trump or go their own way.
The question loomed large as the president’s approval rating continued to sink in the state — one late-October poll showed 70% of Pennsylvania voters disapproved of Trump’s job performance.
Two of the battleground state’s longest-serving Republican incumbents — Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick and Scott Perry — chose opposite courses on the campaign trail this fall. It didn’t make a difference as Democrats swept in deep red districts across the country, including in areas that Trump won by double digits in 2024.
Fitzpatrick, who distanced himself from the increasingly unpopular president and his war in Iran, was projected to lose his seat in the 1st Congressional District to Bucks County Commissioner Bob Harvie.
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Perry, who stuck by Trump and defended some of the administration’s most controversial moves while serving his seventh term in Congress, was also projected to lose to the Democratic nominee, former local news anchor Janelle Stelson, in his Harrisburg-area district.
In Pennsylvania, Republicans lost all four of their most contested districts — in Pennsylvania’s 8th District, Rep. Rob Bresnahan was projected to lose his seat to Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti after drawing criticism for his stock trading in a year when voters were angry about corruption. Over in the Lehigh Valley’s 7th Congressional District, Rep. Ryan Mackenzie was also projected to lose against the Democrat nominee, firefighter Bob Brooks.
The loss of Pennsylvania’s four competitive districts alongside an over 20-point win for Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro could cement a new direction for the state, where those districts have historically swung back and forth between the two political parties.
The moderate Fitzpatrick had represented Republicans’ best hope in the state in a wave election year for Democrats. He represented his suburban community for 10 years, after winning the seat of his late brother, Mike Fitzpatrick, and criticized the president’s tariff policies, his comments on Russia’s war in Ukraine, and the administration’s proposed “anti-weaponization” fund. He voted to end hostilities in Iran repeatedly in the lead-up to Election Day.
“I’m not happy with Trump,” Fitzpatrick told CNBC in October.
“I take him out of the equation,” he told The Washington Sun’s Paul Kane.
Fitzpatrick voted against the final version of the Republican’s sweeping tax-cut bill in 2025 and told reporters throughout the campaign that if not for Pennsylvania’s closed-party voting system, he would have re-registered as an independent.
Christopher Nicholas, a Republican political consultant in Pennsylvania, told The Sun that Fitzpatrick has always bucked traditional party conventions, which had historically propelled Fitzpatrick to victory in Bucks County.
“He is a special guy with a special background doing a special thing,” Nicholas said. “I think him being a moderate is not a foxhole conversion. It’s something that has been true for years. In previous cycles, he’s been primaried by more conservative Republicans.”
But Nicholas noted that the area is bluer than other battleground districts around the state and swung narrowly for Kamala Harris in the 2024 election.
“That was always one of the things that the Fitzpatricks used to do. They could appeal to the lower Bucks blue-collar folks because they were from there, while still getting the Republicans in the county to come along with them as well,” Nicholas said, adding that today’s political climate makes attracting both sides more difficult.
Still, bucking Trump would have been Fitzpatrick’s only realistic path to victory, given the profile of his district, said J. Miles Coleman, an editor at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics.
“Charitably, Trump’s approval rating is 40% nationwide,” Coleman said. “That’s one of only three congressional districts in the country that voted for Kamala Harris in 2024 but sent a Republican in Congress.”
A bit more than an hour’s drive to the west, where the 10th District sprawls out from Harrisburg, Scott Perry embraced his party and campaigned alongside House Speaker Mike Johnson, a staunch ally of the president’s, in the closing days of the election cycle.
The 13-year incumbent closely aligned himself with the president, blaming media coverage for Trump’s low poll numbers and defending the administration’s war in Iran.
“All they get is bad news from the people that have the biggest megaphone that are screaming that they hate Donald Trump 24 hours a day, 365 days a year,” Perry told Newsmax in October. “A lot of great things are happening in the world.”
Perry’s alignment with the president was not a departure from his longtime political persona. A former chair of the conservative Freedom Caucus, Perry had long campaigned on lower taxes and opposition to federal overreach.
But Perry has had to run in a more competitive district since Pennsylvania redrew its congressional maps in 2018. That’s made electoral success harder for the incumbent, who beat Janelle Stelson by just 1 point in 2024.
“Even though Trump carried the district by 4 or 5 points, that district has been moving Democratic every cycle,” Coleman said.
Nicholas said it wasn’t surprising to see Perry struggle, given the circumstances. His close association with Trump didn’t help in a battleground district.
“Scott [Perry]’s district changed,” Nicholas said ahead of Election Day. “His district got less Republican. So you combine that with this being the midterm election, the turnout matrix is different, the unpopular president now is a Republican, not a Democrat, like it was two years ago.”
Still, Coleman added, Perry may have calculated that hugging Trump was important to juice up turnout among the Republican base.
Staying in lockstep with an unpopular Trump, Nicholas said, meant that Perry’s most likely path to victory was attacking Stelson for “her foibles and missteps.”
“They both won victories in 2024, back when the unpopular president was the Democrat Joe Biden. Now the unpopular incumbent president is a Republican. So that changes a lot of the kind of political culture and environment that you’re in,” Nicholas said.
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