Republicans have had an eye on the congressional seat held by Democrat Matt Cartwright in northeast Pennsylvania since the moment he beat Rep. Tim Holden in a Democratic primary 10 years ago. Holden, a Blue Dog centrist, 10-term incumbent, and dean of the Pennsylvania congressional delegation fell to Cartwright in the Democratic primary in 2012 by a whopping 14 percentage points.
Holden’s constituents had moved farther left, making him more vulnerable in a primary.
Republicans were hopeful the sprawling Scranton/Wilkes-Barre seat would be gettable in a general election for a Republican that fall. They were wrong. They were wrong again in 2016, even when Donald Trump surprised a lot of people by winning the state. And they were wrong again in 2018, even after the seat became a little more Republican when the Democrat-majority on the state Supreme Court redrew the district lines.
Jeff Brauer of Keystone College in Factoryville, where the seat sits, leans toward saying Republicans are still wrong to think they can beat Cartwright. But Jim Bognet, the former Trump administration official and Republican running against Cartwright disagrees.
So must Trump, because he is heading his way on Thursday to give a speech in Joe Biden’s home county the same night as Biden’s acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention.
Trump has never shied away from drawing attention to Republican candidates running in down-ballot races. After two years of haggling with a Democrat-controlled House of Representatives, he’s probably a robust supporter of a Bognet win.
But the region, whose flip from Barack Obama to Trump in 2016 took many experts by surprise, is harder to read this time around. This is Biden’s hometown, where he was born and grew up before the Bidens moved to Delaware in his preteen years. The number of campaign signs around here are much more pronounced than Hillary Clinton’s presence, even though she was baptized in Scranton and spent her childhood summers nearby.
People are less likely to talk about who they support on the record for a variety of reasons — it’s personal, possible backlash, and the impact their voting choice may have on their family, personal, and professional lives.
“Frankly, I’m not sure what to think about this race,” said Professor Brauer. “My gut says that Cartwright is fine since it’s really hard to campaign right now, especially for unknown challengers against an incumbent.”
The political science professor and long-time resident of the district said Bognet is running as a huge Trump supporter and really relying on Trump to do well. It’s setting up a referendum on the president in a district slowly growing more Republican. “Cartwright is taking nothing for granted and seems to be running scared, more than ever before,” Brauer said.
Obviously, there is also a lot of time left in this cycle for shifts in support. But Brauer warns that the pick of California Sen. Kamala Harris for Biden’s running mate could revitalize the old Obama coalition and hurt Republicans.
If Bognet is anything, he is relentless and reflective of the district where family is king, and so is your work ethic. “I grew up in a big Italian-Irish family in Hazleton, Pennsylvania. My dad had nine brothers and sisters. I have 25 cousins on one side and 20 on another. We all grew up working construction in the family construction business. My dad built schools and hospitals, worked in factories, digging ditches and knocking down walls,” he said in an interview with the Washington Examiner.
“I played football, basketball, baseball at Hazleton High School. Got lucky, got a full-ride academically to Penn State. I got a degree in finance there and after working for a few years, went out and got a partial scholarship to UCLA,” he said it was there in California where he got his law degree and his MBA.
Politics started for him as a volunteer on a recall campaign to get rid of California Gov. Gray Davis, “and somehow that resulted in a job as an economic adviser in the Schwarzenegger administration. I thought I’d do that for a year, but ended up doing campaigns for two years.”
In between, he started a small business doing crisis communications, then got the opportunity to serve in the Trump administration in 2019, working on manufacturing small businesses. “The challenge was, how do we rebuild the industrial heartland of the United States?”
The spark hit him to run for office while he was sitting in Washington watching the impeachment proceedings, and his blood started to boil. “When they eventually voted to impeach, I’d reached a personal breaking point. I met with my family, prayed about it over the holidays, and I just decided that I thought I could do more to defend the president, to help our country by moving home and trying to take out one of these guys that is just 100% dedicated to impeaching President Trump and removing him from office.”
Thus the candidacy of Bognet began. But success was never guaranteed. First, he had to compete in the most crowded congressional primary in Pennsylvania this cycle, beating out five other impressive candidates for the nomination in the June 2 primary.
To date, he has challenged Cartwright to five debates in the five counties that are entirely or partly within the 8th Congressional District: Lackawanna, Luzerne, Monroe, Pike, and Wayne. Cartwright agreed to one debate.
He says he feels a lot of enthusiasm. When Cartwright placed a negative ad, Bognet responded with a positive commercial about his father’s heart attack, reinforcing his commitment to protect Medicare, Social Security, and people with preexisting conditions.
While other Republican candidates in other districts shy away from Trump, Bognet supports him with open arms. “Nowhere do people get more excited for a visit from President Trump than northeast Pennsylvania. He has brought about an unparalleled boom for [the region], built the best economy in memory, and will do it again,” he said.
Trump won Cartwright’s district by 10 percentage points in 2016. It makes sense, even with Biden’s hometown shadow looming, for Bognet to go full-Trump, and he does. “President Trump delivered for northeast Pennsylvania, and we will deliver a win in Pennsylvania in November.”
