FAIRLESS HILLS, Pa. — Bob Harvie faces an opponent with a who’s who of endorsements from liberal groups that usually back Democrats: the Service Employees International Union, the AFL-CIO, the largest teachers union and two of the most prominent environmental groups.
Harvie isn’t some right-wing conservative. He is a lifelong Democrat squaring off against the most moderate Republican in Congress, Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick.
Harvie’s job is to convince voters, despite their long affinity for the congressman and his late brother who represented this battleground for four terms, that after 10 years on Capitol Hill, Fitzpatrick is different now — and not in a good way.
A new ad this week highlights how Fitzpatrick owns a rental property in California, that he cast a decisive vote on the first version of President Donald Trump’s massive policy bill last summer and voted with Republican leaders on a procedural vote that delayed the release of the Epstein files.
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“Congress changed Fitzpatrick. Now, it’s time we change Congress,” Harvie says, concluding the ad.
The incumbent is not taking any of this sitting down. Instead of the more placid campaigns of recent years, which focused mostly on positive image enhancement, Fitzpatrick has unleashed a multimillion-dollar barrage of negative ads that accuse Harvie of voting for a pay hike as county commissioner, along with hints of corruption in a previous local office.
He tells voters that he is every bit the independent-minded Republican they’ve known well, painting Harvie as an overly ambitious politician who “doesn’t relate to the middle-class” voters who dominate this Philadelphia suburb.
“I personally feel very, very close to my district,” Fitzpatrick told The Washington Sun in an hour-long interview this week. “I’m more present than him by a factor of 10.”
Fitzpatrick could be considered the last of a dying breed in Congress, the liberal northeastern Republicans. He descends from a lineage of 25 to 30 years ago when Connie Morella of Maryland, Nancy Johnson and Chris Shays of Connecticut, Charlie Bass of New Hampshire and Sherwood Boehlert of New York had a big presence inside the Republican caucus. They were proud supporters of lower taxes while backing liberal social policies and programs.
One by one they were wiped out politically as their suburban bastions recoiled at the increasingly rightward lean of the national Republican Party.
Recently elected Republicans from that region — Reps. Mike Lawler and Nick LaLota of New York, Jen Kiggans of Virginia and Ryan Mackenzie and Rob Bresnahan of Pennsylvania — are more conservative and outwardly confrontational than their predecessors.
It’s left Fitzpatrick feeling increasingly isolated, particularly after he worked to round up the 10 key Republican votes in late 2021 to pass then-President Joe Biden’s infrastructure package. He faced so much hostility from fellow Republicans that he has refused ever since to attend the weekly conference meetings Republicans hold for internal deliberations.
He is a self-admitted Republican in name only.
“I’m a registered Republican. There’s a difference,” he told The Sun. If Pennsylvania allowed independents to vote in primaries, Fitzpatrick said he would leave the Republican fold and register as an independent.
“Right now, I’m homeless,” he said.
This homeless politician has always faced headwinds. Trump lost his district in 2016, 2020 and 2024, and in 2018 and 2022, Democrats won the governor’s race by 18 and 20 percentage points, respectively, in Pennsylvania’s 1st Congressional District.
Yet Fitzpatrick really only had one close election, the 2018 midterms, when he won by just over 2.5 percentage points. Now, however, the state’s Democratic governor, Josh Shapiro, is expected to match or exceed his 2022 margin in this district in what has turned into a cakewalk reelection campaign.
The popular governor has set his sights on flipping at least three state Senate seats and taking full Democratic control of the General Assembly, for his Harrisburg ambitions. And he’s working hard to flip up to four U.S. House seats in Pennsylvania to win a Democratic majority and burnish his national credentials for a possible 2028 presidential campaign.
Three targeted state Senate races are in the 1st Congressional District, and all three Democratic campaign offices in Bucks County are shared with staff for Shapiro, Harvie and the state legislative candidates.
Harvie realizes that, despite losing this district, Trump received close to 50% in each race and that he can’t try to just highlight things Democrats consider scandals.
“It’s not just about, ‘Oh, I’m mad about what he said on “Access Hollywood.”’ Whatever that was. I mean, obviously, people clearly don’t care about that, and that’s something that — we just have to kind of focus on the issues that do matter to them,” he told The Sun during an hour-long interview Saturday at his campaign office here in lower Bucks County.
So instead the Democrat is focusing on the Republican-led Congress letting health-care tax subsidies lapse and how notifications have gone out talking about a more than 15% increase in health costs next year.
Harvie dismisses those endorsements Fitzpatrick can tout as the groups’ efforts to show some tiny measure of bipartisanship, rewarding the incumbent for a few votes while overlooking some key times he gave conservatives a big win.
“That’s what Brian gets. He gets a participation trophy,” Harvie said. “He shows up. He’s the least bad Republican.”
While Fitzpatrick voted against the final version of what Trump hailed as the One Big Beautiful Bill, Harvie’s campaign points out that he voted for the initial version of the legislation that included those permanent tax cuts for the wealthy and even a provision meant to clamp down on local officials’ ability to regulate data centers.
“He’s hiding from his record, and we’re not going to let him hide from his record,” Harvie said.
A sign hanging in the campaign office shows two sides of Fitzpatrick, calling him: “Two-faced Fitzpatrick, votes MAGA, not moderate.”
In fact, road signs have become a surprisingly dominant theme in the race, a trip back in time where the locals discuss the content of the signs as much as the TV ads.
On one major intersection, Harvie supporters will have each corner covered with a simple white sign and black letters: “Fitzpatrick voted 7 TIMES to RAISE grocery prices.”
Drive a block or two, the next major intersection is blanketed with small white signs from Fitzpatrick backers, with the same black lettering: “Bob Harvie voted HIMSELF a pay raise.”
By June 30, Fitzpatrick had already spent more than $4.8 million on the race, about 60% more than he spent in the entire 2022 midterm campaign. Harvie had spent a quarter of the incumbent’s total at that point, stewarding his resources for the final five-week sprint to Election Day.
Unlike past election years, there’s no Senate race, no presidential campaign and not a competitive governor’s race to dominate TV screens.
Fitzpatrick’s race is getting more attention than ever before in the Philadelphia media market, even if independent political handicappers still rate it a “lean” or “likely” Republican seat.
His brother, Mike Fitzpatrick, first won the district in 2004 but lost in the 2006 midterms when a Middle East war and corruption allegations created a terrible environment for Republicans. He won the seat back in 2010 and coasted to two easy reelections, before deciding to retire after 2016.
That’s when Brian Fitzpatrick quit his FBI job in California and moved home to follow in his brother’s footsteps. The only thing different on the campaign signs was the first name, and his career was launched.
The older brother’s most important piece of advice was to never think about his own ideological position on a vote, nor worry about Trump’s position.
“I take him out of the equation,” Brian Fitzpatrick said.
That’s the ethos that has led him to support same-sex marriage, banning assault weapons, supporting Biden’s infrastructure plan and becoming the first Republican congressional candidate to win the endorsement of the Natural Resources Defense Council.
“They support me because I support their issues,” he told The Sun.
Harvie labeled it a mirage wrapped inside a brand identity that is facing its toughest test with this district’s swing voters.
“They’re tired of what has been called Facebook Fitz. You know, he’ll show up on Facebook, he’ll throw out the first pitch of a Little League game, but when it comes to holding an in-person town hall, he hasn’t done one in nine years,” he said.
So far the incumbent has not agreed to a debate, with Democrats saying he is hiding behind the negative commercials as a shield.
To Fitzpatrick, he hasn’t changed at all over the past decade. Instead, he said, “the two parties have become cults.”
Fitzpatrick considers his support for the law to allow independent voters into primaries in all 50 states a defining position for the future.
If he can pull off another victory, he will continue on as a self-proclaimed RINO.
“I am an independent who is registered Republican,” he said.
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