Scranton’s New Stakes: Can Democrats Reclaim the ‘Blue Wall’ in PA-08?

A high-stakes House race in Northeast Pennsylvania tests whether a municipal anti-corruption brand can break through a district that has been trending right with working-class voters.

What to Know: 

• Freshman Republican Rob Bresnahan won by roughly 1.5 points in 2024, while the district’s R+4 PVI and Cook’s Lean R rating point to a real structural edge for the GOP.
• Democrats are trying to make Bresnahan’s heavy stock-trading activity, including trades tied to AI data center supply chains and Medicaid-related holdings, a populist liability.
• Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti is leaning on her former independent brand and Obama-era Treasury credentials to frame the race around trust, transparency, and governance competence.
• Cognetti must run up margins in Lackawanna while limiting losses in Luzerne, where Republicans now hold a voter-registration advantage.
• Democrats want to revive the kind of cross-pressured voting that let Matt Cartwright survive in a Trump-won district for years.

Representative Rob Bresnahan

Paige G. Cognetti – Mayor

The Structural Shift in Northeast Pennsylvania

The fight for Pennsylvania’s 8th Congressional District is not just about a single House seat. It is a live test of whether Democrats can compete again in blue-collar territory that has been moving steadily toward Republicans. Matt Cartwright held on for years in a district Donald Trump carried twice, but his loss in 2024 signaled that old loyalties are no longer a reliable firewall.

Bresnahan enters 2026 with incumbency and a race environment that national handicappers still see as leaning Republican. The Cook Political Report rates the district Lean R and lists a Partisan Voting Index of R+4. That is the kind of baseline advantage that usually forces Democrats to win on candidate quality and message discipline, not on national party momentum.

PA-08 2024 margin breakdown, Created by Campaign Now with Gemini, data from Cook Political Report

Still, 2024 was not a blowout. Bresnahan’s roughly 1.5-point win, about 7,000 votes, shows the seat remains gettable if Democrats can rebuild a workable coalition. The question is whether Paige Cognetti can do it without letting the contest collapse into national tribal politics that generally favor the GOP across much of the district.

The Liability of the Stock Trader Narrative

The most consequential early development is the scrutiny surrounding Bresnahan’s personal trading activity. In a district with strong working-class instincts and deep suspicion of insider advantage, perceived self-dealing can become a credibility problem fast.

Reporting indicates Bresnahan executed 648 stock trades during his first year, placing him among the most active traders in Congress. Two episodes are especially usable for a challenger trying to frame a corruption and trust argument.

Bresnahan trading timeline, Created by Campaign Now with Gemini using data from Politico

First, Bresnahan bought Credo Technology stock in June 2025, a company tied to data center infrastructure, while also encouraging data centers as an economic opportunity for Northeastern Pennsylvania. The stock later rose sharply. Second, reporting also flagged sales of Medicaid provider stock shortly before a vote connected to Medicaid cuts, a timeline that invites uncomfortable questions even if no rules were technically broken.

Bresnahan’s office argues a financial adviser handled trades and that Bresnahan did not direct individual transactions. That defense may reduce legal exposure, but it does not automatically fix the political optics. In competitive districts, voters often judge the pattern, not the paperwork.

"Mayor Paige welcomes investment into Northeastern Pennsylvania — she opposes members of Congress trading off of it." — Cognetti Campaign Spokesperson

Cognetti’s best version of this argument is not left versus right. It is local fairness versus Washington privilege, especially when the issue touches prices, power bills, or health care anxiety. The GOP risk is that a stock-trading storyline makes it harder for Bresnahan to run as a clean populist outsider, which is often the most effective posture for Republicans in places like this.

Cognetti’s Anti-Corruption Brand

Cognetti is not a traditional Northeastern Pennsylvania Democrat in the old labor-movement mold. Her political identity comes from local reform politics. She won the Scranton mayor’s office as an independent, building a brand around good government and transparency after the city’s corruption scandals. That biography gives her a way to present herself as a local accountability candidate, not simply a national party avatar.

Her resume adds a second credential Democrats increasingly deploy in swing terrain: governance competence. She served as a senior adviser at the U.S. Treasury Department during the Obama-Biden administration and later held roles tied to oversight and public management. At the city level, she points to Scranton’s exit from distressed financial status during her tenure and awards tied to municipal performance. Supporters will frame that as proof she can manage budgets and deliver results. Critics will argue it is a technocratic profile that can feel distant in a district where cultural proximity matters.

Paige Cognetti announces her congressional bid in Harrisburg. Photo via Spotlight PA/Commonwealth Media Services.

Financially, Cognetti is showing she can compete. Fourth-quarter fundraising numbers put her close to the incumbent, and while Bresnahan still holds a meaningful cash-on-hand advantage, the gap is not prohibitive for a top-tier House race. In practice, the contest may be decided less by raw dollars than by which candidate convinces persuadable voters that the other is playing a different game than they are.

The Geography of Realignment

The electoral math in PA-08 runs through Lackawanna and Luzerne.

Lackawanna County remains the Democratic anchor, but the advantage is narrower than it used to be. Democrats hold a registration edge there, yet that edge has been shrinking. Cognetti needs more than a win in Lackawanna. She needs a large margin, and she needs turnout discipline in Scranton and its suburbs to compensate for losses elsewhere.

Map of northeastern Pennsylvania with Lackawanna and Luzerne counties highlighted, key to the PA‑08 battleground. Source: Wikipedia.

Luzerne County is the harder problem. Republicans now hold the registration advantage, and Bresnahan’s 2024 margin in Luzerne was large enough to offset Cartwright’s performance in Lackawanna. If the race is nationalized in Luzerne, the GOP is comfortable. If the race stays local, with cost-of-living, trust, and “who is on our side” framing, Democrats have at least a plausible opening.

Republicans will likely try to define Cognetti early as culturally disconnected and aligned with national Democratic priorities. Democrats will try to define Bresnahan as a self-interested insider who cannot credibly play the outsider role anymore. Both strategies target the same slice of voters: working-class ticket splitters who still evaluate candidates as individuals.

The strategic reality is that Cognetti cannot afford to be viewed merely as the mayor of Lackawanna County. To retake the seat, she must penetrate the Republican firewall in neighboring Luzerne County. If the GOP successfully isolates her appeal to Scranton and its immediate suburbs, the math becomes impossible for Democrats. However, if Cognetti can soften Bresnahan’s margins in Luzerne by selling her governance record to working-class voters there, the incumbent’s structural advantage evaporates.

Ticket Splitting and Down-Ballot Leverage

One reason Democrats are still in this race at all is the district’s history of ticket splitting. Cartwright repeatedly ran ahead of the top of the ticket, suggesting that some voters are open to a Democrat who feels local, independent, and non-ideological. Cognetti is clearly trying to replicate that lane, but with a different brand: reform and competence rather than labor heritage.

Democrats also believe statewide environment matters. If a high-salience statewide race helps motivate their coalition and gives swing voters permission to split, PA-08 becomes a real battleground. Republicans, meanwhile, will bet that in a nationalized midterm, partisan sorting wins. Their strongest argument is structural: the district’s PVI, the broader rightward drift, and a Republican base that is now more consistent across rural and exurban parts of the map.

Wrap Up

PA-08 is a telling test case for the post-Blue Wall era. Democrats are experimenting with a strategy that emphasizes local reform credentials, anti-corruption messaging, and “competence over ideology” framing. If that works in a district rated Lean R with an R+4 baseline, it becomes a model for other rural-adjacent seats where Democrats have slipped.

For Republicans, holding PA-08 would reinforce a different conclusion: that working-class realignment is durable enough to withstand candidate-specific controversy, even when it involves optics that would have been politically toxic a decade ago. Either way, the Bresnahan-Cognetti race is not just a local contest. It is a proxy fight over whether persuasion politics still exists in the places that once formed the heart of the Blue Wall.

Sources:

https://theaapcmarketing.informz.net/theaapcmarketing/data/images/AAPC%2002-05-2026.pdf
https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/results/2024/11/05/pennsylvania-house-district-8/
https://www.tnonline.com/20241106/bresnahan-pulls-off-upset-unseats-cartwright-in-u-s-8th-district/
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/dems-end-2025-statewide-voter-200500369.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAANmj69hs1kmMvBzydmmoR-2INkQUG7jDlRKHJuR9_EnnQu8OYdYGI9fG7VaOcxhY_RNnL0mgSE8ROlSOUgPOrTUeJC-j8nnINN6GXA_xZpRtBI-4gLU4nsgaidzxItQ91mknk1Qah8NKRfU057HueuJ67Gjc-vV8VpjJmQi3D4Px
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https://www.scranton.edu/academics/cas/ceeps/candidate_bios.shtml
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/01/12/bresnahan-stock-trade-data-centers-00721852
https://penncapital-star.com/government-politics/q4-takeaways-fitzpatrick-has-millions-more-on-hand-than-other-pennsylvania-congressional-candidates/