PHILADELPHIA — The race for a swing House seat in Pennsylvania is getting costly as Democrats make an aggressive push to oust Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA), a five-term incumbent and the rare Republican to represent a district won by former Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024.
Starting on Tuesday, House Majority PAC began spending the $6.7 million it has earmarked for Pennsylvania’s 1st Congressional District, a light-blue battleground that rejected President Donald Trump in each of the last three presidential elections.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has another $945,000 dedicated to the race in support of Bucks County Commissioner Bob Harvie, Fitzpatrick’s Democratic opponent this fall.
Both are national Democratic groups aligned with congressional leadership and are targeting his seat as part of a nationwide effort to retake control of the House in November. They need just a few seats to flip, and Pennsylvania is home to four competitive races.
Fitzpatrick had previously been considered nearly unbeatable, owing to his large war chest, centrist streak in Congress, and familial ties to the district, as his late brother, Mike Fitzpatrick, held the seat before him. But nonpartisan election forecasters believe that edge has eroded as the political environment has worsened for Republicans, a finding supported by the sheer amount of spending in the district.
National Republicans have begun to get more heavily involved in protecting Fitzpatrick, with the Congressional Leadership Fund entering the race with a whopping $4.5 million booking on Tuesday and the National Republican Congressional Committee coordinating with Fitzpatrick on a $465,000 ad buy.
That’s on top of the $5 million Fitzpatrick has already put into the race, according to AdImpact.
The 1st District, home to the bellwether Philadelphia suburb of Bucks County, is not the most expensive of the competitive House battlegrounds in Pennsylvania. The districts held by Reps. Ryan Mackenzie (R-PA), Scott Perry (R-PA), and Rob Bresnahan (R-PA) have also drawn intense interest from Democrats and are generally seen as more viable pickup opportunities.
Still, the level of spending is a departure from past election cycles and a sign that Democrats believe Fitzpatrick is truly vulnerable.
They effectively wrote off his district in 2022 and 2024, with the DCCC spending just $25,000 and $75,000 in those cycles, according to AdImpact.
The last election to even come close was in 2020, when the DCCC spent $1.6 million and House Majority PAC contributed another $2.5 million.
“If there’s ever been a year for it to happen … I would say this is the year,” said Connor O’Hanlon, a member of the Doylestown City Council. “It’s always been hard to get a real pulse of things, because even when I’ve felt really good in the past, somehow Fitzpatrick would pull it out and pretty sizably, but I do think it is different this year.”
O’Hanlon, a progressive Democrat, cited the “focus and investment” Harvie has received from national groups, as well as the recent appearance of Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) in the district.
The outcome of past races offers an unambiguous explanation of why Fitzpatrick is considered formidable. He defeated his Democratic opponent in 2024 by 13 points, even as Trump lost the district by 1 point to Harris. He overperformed the president by an even larger margin in 2020.
Fitzpatrick is also one of the most outspoken Republican critics of the president in the House, voting against his GOP tax law last year and sparring on other elements of his agenda, including tariffs and the war in Iran.
Most recently, Fitzpatrick promised to force a vote on legislation aimed at nullifying Trump’s diesel agreement with Russia.
The disagreements — Trump taunted his wife, White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich, over them in May — have helped burnish his reputation as a centrist and are part of what gives Fitzpatrick a reasonable chance of winning, even if Republicans have a bad election night nationally.
But Democrats are betting public sentiment has turned against Trump to the point that Fitzpatrick might sink under a blue wave. And they’re not letting his votes in Congress get in the way of attacking him as a Trump loyalist.
House Majority PAC began running an ad on Tuesday morning, set in the kitchen of a “hopping mad” Pennsylvanian woman, telling voters that Fitzpatrick is “not for us anymore.”
“While Brian Fitzpatrick pretends to be bipartisan, the truth is that he has fully embraced the economic agenda of a deeply unpopular president,” HMP communications director CJ Warnke said in a statement. “His ties to Trump will sink his campaign in November.”
The DCCC also shared with the Washington Examiner a coordinated ad with the Harvie campaign claiming that Fitzpatrick “has changed” and had “traded Middletown for Mar-a-Lago.”
The Fitzpatrick campaign did not respond to a request for comment, but the NRCC voiced confidence that he would continue representing the 1st District in the new Congress while reviving allegations that Harvie was caught in an FBI investigation.
“Corrupt Bob Harvie, the subject of an FBI investigation, has a stagnant campaign, a significant cash disadvantage, and a disqualifying record of tax hikes and misuse of taxpayer resources,” said NRCC spokesman Reilly Richardson.
The Harvie campaign has filed a defamation lawsuit against a pro-Fitzpatrick PAC over the FBI claim, which Democratic lawyers say is baseless and rooted in testimony Harvie gave as a grand jury witness years ago.
As for fundraising, Harvie is trailing Fitzpatrick, who had the most cash on hand of any Republican incumbent in Pennsylvania. But the Harvie campaign has brushed aside the idea that Fitzpatrick is somehow unbeatable, releasing an internal memo this past week showing the race a dead heat. The survey runs counter to a Fitzpatrick campaign poll from September showing him ahead by 9 points.
A dearth of independent polling offers limited insight into the state of the race.
The late infusion of cash by national Republicans will be a welcome sight for Fitzpatrick, who previously remarked that his party was “gambling” by assuming he could overcome the political headwinds of a midterm election year.
As of Tuesday, Republicans are spending more than Democrats in the 1st District, $11.7 million to $9.8 million.
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Its arrival with weeks to go until Election Day likely means Republicans won’t get as much bang for their buck, however. Earlier TV bookings tend to receive more favorable ad rates, although Fitzpatrick’s deep war chest means he can stretch his dollar at the cheaper candidate reservation rate.
Democrats framed the Republican investments as proof that Fitzpatrick is “one of their own.” Fitzpatrick, for his part, has signaled that he is ambivalent about his Republican affiliation to the point that he would register as an independent if Pennsylvania had an open primary.
James A. Downs contributed to this report.
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[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
