Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti launches run for Congress, blasting Rep. Rob Bresnahan’s stock trading

Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti launched her campaign for Congress with a blistering offensive against the man she hopes to replace.

Cognetti became the first woman elected mayor of Scranton in 2020 by running as a political outsider against what she argued was a corrupt political establishment.

Now Cognetti, a Democrat, is trying a similar strategy to get to Washington by arguing the freshman incumbent she’s challenging, Republican U.S. Rep. Rob Bresnahan, has had an unscrupulous start to his term.

“Rob ran for Congress on a promise to ban stock trades. This year, he’s already made 600 trades — 600,” Cognetti says in an ad launching her campaign, released Tuesday.

“I’m running for Congress because people here deserve a lot better than a rich kid disrespecting our hard work and proud legacy. We can stand tall against a Washington that takes advantage of working people and make it work for us.”

Bresnahan has maintained that the trades are handled by a financial adviser. But the scope of them — 617 totaling $7.24 million this year — has drawn scrutiny that even some Republicans have worried could become an effective line of attack as he seeks reelection.

Bresnahan’s campaign was quick to criticize Cognetti for running for Congress with her mayoral reelection looming in November.

“Paige Cognetti launching a vanity campaign for Congress while still running for a new term as Scranton Mayor tells you everything you need to know about her priorities,” said Chris Pack, a spokesperson for Bresnahan’s campaign. “We look forward to putting a spotlight on her extreme and dangerous positions, which are completely out of step with Northeastern Pennsylvania.”

Cognetti enters the race with the backing of former U.S. Rep. Matt Cartwright, a Democrat who lost to Bresnahan by 1.6 percentage points last year. She’s also endorsed by Lt. Gov. Austin Davis and U.S. Rep Chris Deluzio (D., Allegheny).

She’s the first Democrat to declare against Bresnahan, a contrast with the race in the Lehigh Valley, where half a dozen Democrats are vying for a chance to take on Republican U.S. Rep. Ryan Mackenzie.

If Cognetti remains the lone Democratic contender, she’ll have the benefit of training her sights on Bresnahan and the general election.

Her launch video certainly did. The ad accused Bresnahan of ripping Medicaid away from Pennsylvania families by voting for President Donald Trump’s budget bill. And it scrutinized the timing of some of his stock trading.

“Sold Chinese stocks the week of a tariff. Buys missile stocks before a war, buys jet stocks before a big contract,” she said in the ad, which closes with her saying “day trading away the public trust is not who we are.”

Bresnahan campaigned on banning congressional stock trading and introduced a House bill that would have forbidden it in May, which makes his habitual trading all the more of a target for Democrats.

The National Republican Campaign Committee accused Cognetti of “resorting to baseless lies.”

“From cutting taxes to protecting critical programs, Bresnahan has always put NEPA first, and voters have no interest in Cognetti’s out-of-touch agenda,” said NRCC spokesperson Reilly Richardson.

Cognetti ran for mayor in 2020 after the former mayor of Scranton had pleaded guilty to conspiracy, bribery, and extortion and was sentenced to seven years in prison.

She ran as an independent with the slogan “Paige Against the Machine,” and beat the Democratic Party-backed candidate.

A native Oregonian, Cognetti formerly worked on Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign and then later as a member of his Treasury Department.

She worked briefly at Goldman Sachs in New York before her move to Scranton in 2016. She served on the city’s school board and then as a special assistant to the state’s attorney general.

Scranton has an outsize role in national politics, often a symbol of blue-collar, middle-class values. It became the emblem of former President Joe Biden’s campaign as he used his Pennsylvania hometown to contrast against Trump’s lavish Mar-a-Lago home.

The day Biden won the election in 2020, Scrantonians flooded to his former home on Washington Avenue, where Cognetti gave an impromptu speech.

“You can be anything you want to be. This little girl can be anything she wants to be,” Cognetti said then, holding her baby daughter. “I couldn’t be luckier to be in this position right now in this moment together as a city.”

Trump, who won Pennsylvania’s 8th Congressional District by three points in 2020, went on to increase that margin to nine points in 2024.