The least loyal Republican
Fitzpatrick’s Democratic challenger, Bob Harvie, has lambasted the Bucks County Republican as a “rubber stamp” for Trump. Here’s what the numbers show.
More than a year and a half into President Donald Trump’s second term, U.S. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick has voted against the White House and the GOP more than any other House Republican.
Yet, he has still voted with the president and his party nearly 70% and 77% of the time, respectively, during this congressional term, according to a new Inquirer analysis.
Fitzpatrick’s nuanced voting record has become a focal point of Democrats’ campaign against the five-term GOP incumbent from purple Bucks County this fall.
His Democratic challenger, Bob Harvie, argues that Fitzpatrick has been a “rubber stamp” for Trump’s policies and the GOP establishment when it matters most. Meanwhile, Fitzpatrick continues to tout his moderate, bipartisan brand that has proved successful in elections past.
Both of those assertions will be tested in front of voters this November as Fitzpatrick defends his swing district seat in a heated race in the 1st Congressional District, which includes all of Bucks County and a sliver of Montgomery County. Trump narrowly lost the district in 2024, despite winning Bucks County.
Fitzpatrick is voting with the president and his party less frequently during the current Congress, which began last year, than he did during the two years of Trump’s first term, when the GOP also held the majority, The Inquirer found in a comprehensive analysis of the Bucks County lawmaker’s 5,064 roll-call votes since he joined Congress nearly a decade ago.
The data underscore how Fitzpatrick, the last remaining GOP U.S. representative in the Philadelphia suburbs, is able to simultaneously straddle party lines and talk about his disdain for the two-party system while also serving as a key vote in the Republican conference — a cocktail of qualities that has made him difficult to unseat in years past.
This year, Democrats are hoping that a focus on affordability issues amid a national environment that has become increasingly unfavorable to Republicans will be what it takes to unseat Fitzpatrick.
When Fitzpatrick does — and doesn’t — back Trump
Trump and the Bucks County Republican have had their fair share of tense moments, including the president threatening the lawmaker in May for voting against him.
Fitzpatrick has continued to vote against the president recently, including on a war powers resolution to restrict Trump’s military actions in Iran.
“[Fitzpatrick’s] bosses are his constituents back home,” Heather Roberts, a spokesperson for the Fitzpatrick campaign, said in a statement. “Political party retaliation has zero impact on his decision-making.”
Since January 2025, Fitzpatrick has voted with the Trump administration’s 133 stated positions on congressional votes 93 times, according to the analysis.
Fitzpatrick voted with Trump on several high-profile GOP bills, including the SAVE Act, a controversial overhaul of voting laws, and the Laken Riley Act, legislation also supported by some Democrats that requires federal authorities to detain undocumented immigrants arrested for theft-related crimes, issues that Roberts maintained 1st District voters of both parties support.
Fitzpatrick’s votes have also aligned with the White House on other legislation related to immigration, law enforcement, energy, and renaming the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America.”
At the same time, no other House Republican has been less loyal to the president in this time frame. That includes every GOP member from Pennsylvania, many of whom are staunch supporters of Trump. Republicans like U.S. Reps. Ryan Mackenzie, Rob Bresnahan, and Scott Perry, who are defending their seats in contentious swing-district races, vote with Trump more than 90% of the time.
Both Mackenzie and Bresnahan spoke at Trump’s Republican midterm convention in Dallas this month, but Fitzpatrick — the only GOP member of Congress from Pennsylvania not endorsed by Trump — did not attend.
Fitzpatrick’s defections — which have spanned from supporting Ukraine to condemning Trump’s rhetoric — have earned him the president’s ire.
Since 2025, the analysis found, he has voted against the administration’s efforts to overturn numerous environmental regulations implemented by former President Joe Biden, many of which ultimately passed the House. He also was one of two Republicans to vote against the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Trump’s signature domestic policy bill, on final passage (though he had cast a key vote to advance the bill earlier in the process).
The final bill had enough GOP support — 218 members voted yes — to pass without Fitzpatrick’s vote.
Harvie, Fitzpatrick’s Democratic challenger, contended that Fitzpatrick “has mastered the art of the meaningless gesture and breaks with Trump only when he gives him a hall pass.”
[Fitzpatrick] has mastered the art of the meaningless gesture and breaks with Trump only when he gives him a hall pass.
“[Voters] want somebody who’s going to go there and fight for them,” Harvie said. “And, you know, people’s lives aren’t better than they were 10 years ago. And Brian Fitzpatrick and Donald Trump are the big reasons why.”
Roberts said Harvie’s criticism is “absurd” and has been “debunked many times over and in every single election cycle.” She also criticized Harvie’s voting record and said he has not exercised similar levels of independence during his time as Bucks County commissioner and Falls Township supervisor.
Back in Trump’s first term in office, Fitzpatrick sided with the White House on 59% of votes — 81% of the time in 2017-18, but dropping to almost 42% in the following two years, after Democrats gained control of the U.S. House in the 2018 midterms.
Fitzpatrick voted with his party roughly 60% of the time during both the 117th and 118th Congresses, when Biden was in office and the GOP had the majority for the latter two years of his term.
The lawmaker played a key role in getting Biden’s signature bipartisan infrastructure law passed, drawing sharp attacks from fellow Republicans when he was one of 13 GOP members to support it in the House.
What about the GOP?
Fitzpatrick’s alignment with the House Republican Conference has fluctuated depending on which party is in power.
During this Congress, when the GOP holds a narrow majority in the U.S. House, Fitzpatrick has voted with his party 77% of the time, meaning he has split from Republicans 107 times on 472 party unity votes, defined by CQ Roll Call as instances when a majority of voting Republicans oppose a majority of voting Democrats.
That figure is the highest of his career, the analysis shows, though still far below the median of Republicans. It was a similar story during Fitzpatrick’s first term during the 115th Congress in 2017-18, when Trump was in office and Republicans had the House.
By contrast, Fitzpatrick was the least loyal to his party during the 116th Congress in 2019-20 — at 55% — when Trump was still in office, but the GOP did not have the gavel.
A congressional lawmaker’s votes are dependent on which bills make it to the floor. Currently, that is up to House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, whom Fitzpatrick has criticized for his reluctance to bring some bipartisan bills for a vote if Trump opposes them.
Fitzpatrick has introduced 249 bills as lead sponsor, and just under half — 123 — have a bipartisan group of cosponsors.
“The numbers and percentages will change from year to year based entirely on what votes are put on the House Floor,” Roberts said in her statement. “The best measure of independence is how often, and on which issues, does one vote against their own political party, regardless of who the President is and regardless of who the Speaker is.”
Jim Worthington, a major GOP donor in Bucks and owner of the Newtown Athletic Club, said Fitzpatrick’s record is representative of the purple county, home to a plethora of split-ticket voters, and shows that he is able to go against power structures in Washington.
“When you have someone who’s willing to stand up to the power of the majority and take a stand, that’s the type of guy you want,” Worthington said. “It’s pretty lonely when there’s 216 other people in your party voting for something, and you’re voting no. It takes guts, and that’s what he’s doing.”
It’s pretty lonely when there’s 216 other people in your party voting for something, and you’re voting no. It takes guts and that’s what he’s doing.
Over the course of his time in Congress, Fitzpatrick has defected from his fellow House Republicans on votes related to economic and public finance issues, but has agreed with his caucus most on legislation connected to international affairs.
Of the 10 closest votes in which Fitzpatrick diverged from the GOP this year, three were decisive votes that blocked GOP amendments to bills.
Two others were votes in which he supported Democratic motions that fell just short of passing.
Fitzpatrick also joined Democrats in voting against five GOP amendments to bills that passed by one vote.
What does this mean for the midterms?
At the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, Fitzpatrick stood alongside members of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus that he cochairs, condemning the redistricting wars both parties have engaged in and unveiling legislation to prevent a similar situation in the future.
He said in an interview that both Trump and Democrats were “wrong” to kick-start a gerrymandering spree.
“There are so many forces pulling us away from the center, when most Americans are in the center,” he said.
Fitzpatrick has been working to run on that centrist message back at home — even as he wages an aggressive ad campaign against Harvie.
But will his brand and well-fundraised campaign help him in a disadvantageous national political environment for Republicans this year?
Brittany Crampsie, a Democratic consultant in Pennsylvania, said 1st District voters should consider whether they, too, agree with Trump a majority of the time, noting that Fitzpatrick creates an “illusion” that he is independent from the president or his party.
“[Fitzpatrick] doesn’t have enough to celebrate, and voters don’t want to see him pat himself on the back for only supporting this administration 75% of the time,” Crampsie said.
She said that Fitzpatrick’s voting record will not help him survive a blue wave this time around because the issues facing the country, such as the cost of living, are too dire amid what she calls a “change election.” Crampsie said Harvie should continue to focus his campaign on both Fitzpatrick’s record and kitchen-table issues.
“Making a campaign all about opposition to Trump, we’ve seen, is not successful,” Crampsie said. “Voters want a new vision. They want a new platform. They want new ideas, and that’s what Bob Harvie is offering.”
Worthington, the GOP donor, predicted that Fitzpatrick will once again be victorious this year, noting the lawmaker’s massive coalition of labor support, which would typically go to a Democratic candidate, and voters’ desire for a moderate candidate.
“He’s a free, independent thinker. At the end of the day, he tries to do what’s right for everybody, for the majority of people,” Worthington said.
“That’s the problem — there’s too many extremes. You’re either one side or the other. It shouldn’t be like that.”
Staff writer Sam Janesch contributed to this article.
The Inquirer sought to explore Pennsylvania voting records to see how frequently its delegation aligns with its party and the president.
It used roll call data from Voteview as its source material. The Inquirer primarily analyzed “party unity votes” using CQ Roll Call’s established methodology for filtering votes to where a majority of Republicans are voting against a majority of Democrats. Independents are excluded. President Donald Trump’s positions, for his second term, were taken from the White House’s Statements of Administration Policy. First term figures are computed from the presidential positions recorded in Voteview’s roll-call database, which files the president as a separate row and records his/her position on a roll call as that row’s cast code.
For the conference analysis, Republicans who voted on at least half of a Congress’ party unity votes are ranked. Between 197 and 238 Republicans qualify in each Congress.
