Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick on track to spend more than his last three campaigns combined as blue wave builds
Pennsylvania Democratic challengers in other swing districts, however, are far outpacing Republican incumbents in fundraising.
If Philadelphia-area residents feel like they’re seeing U.S. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick on their television screens more than ever, it’s because they probably are.
The moderate Republican — locked in a tight race against Democrat Bob Harvie in a Bucks County-based swing district — is on track to spend more money to avoid getting swept up in a blue wave this fall than he has in his last three campaigns combined, new campaign finance disclosures show.
Fitzpatrick’s campaign spent $5 million over the summer, mostly on advertising in an expensive Philadelphia media market. That was not only more than any other candidate in Pennsylvania’s competitive U.S. House races during the same period, including Harvie’s $962,000. It was more spending by Fitzpatrick in three months than in the entirety of any of his five previous campaigns.
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And, still, he had more left in the bank. After years of robust fundraising, Fitzpatrick’s war chest of $2.4 million heading into October was more than any other swing-district Republican trying to hold onto their seat in Pennsylvania.
The disclosures, which cover campaign fundraising and spending activity from July 1 through Sept. 30, come as Democrats express increasing optimism about unseating Fitzpatrick — who has repeatedly won a narrowly divided district by comfortable margins — as well as the three other vulnerable Republicans in next month’s midterm elections.
Flipping any of those seats would help the party eliminate a narrow Republican majority in the U.S. House. Winning all of them would mean winning the majority with Pennsylvania alone.
“With those four seats, Democrats will take back control of the U.S. House of Representatives,” U.S. Sen. Chris Coons (D., Del.) said Thursday during a Delaware County rally in which he urged voters to “take the bus to Bucks County” to campaign for Harvie. “Pennsylvania saved us before, you can save us again.”
While national Democrats sent an influx of new investments into the Bucks County district, the latest disclosures show Harvie continued to lag in fundraising and spending over the summer.
He raised about $888,000, which was about $150,000 less than Fitzpatrick and almost a third as much as his counterparts in the other competitive districts.
In the Harrisburg-based 10th District, Democrat Janelle Stelson raised $2.3 million while Republican U.S. Rep. Scott Perry raised $1.3 million, records show.
Democrats Bob Brooks and Paige Cognetti — in the Lehigh Valley-based 7th and Scranton-based 8th districts — raised $2.6 million and $2.5 million, respectively. The Republican incumbents they’re facing — U.S. Reps. Ryan Mackenzie and Rob Bresnahan — raised $800,000 and $960,0000, respectively.
As national Democrats and Republicans also pour money independently into each of those districts, all of the candidates — besides Harvie — each spent between $1.5 million and $5 million in the summer to flood the airwaves and turn out their canvassing, phone banking and events operations.
Top-spending candidates don’t always win; Stelson out-raised Perry by about $2.1 million in their first matchup in 2024 and still came a few thousand votes short. But the levels of raising and spending often indicate which candidates have momentum and critical financial resources heading while voters are most engaged in the final weeks of the race.
As of Oct. 1, Stelson had $2.5 million left to spend and Perry had about $1.6 million. Mackenzie, considered the most vulnerable of the Pennsylvania Republicans and one of the most at-risk to lose his seat anywhere in the country, had a cash-on-hand advantage over Brooks of $2.2 million to $1.3 million. Bresnahan and Cognetti’s bank accounts were nearly identical, at $910,000 and $950,000, while Fitzpatrick’s war chest had more than three times Harvie’s $721,000.
National groups, meanwhile, have come to the rescue on both sides. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee started a nearly $1 million advertising campaign for Harvie this week while the Congressional Leadership Fund, which is affiliated with Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, redirected $3.6 million to give Fitzpatrick a boost.
While Fitzpatrick often criticizes the two-party system and causes headaches for GOP leadership as its least loyal member during House votes, he’s also collected tens of thousands of dollars from political action committees associated with GOP leadership, his latest disclosures show. That includes funds from Majority Whip Tom Emmer’s PAC and Grow the Majority, a joint fundraising committee associated with Johnson.
Before the launch of the other independent super PAC spending on his behalf, Fitzpatrick told The New York Times he thought the lack of national GOP support was “a gamble on their part.” After meeting with Johnson in his district last week, he said in an interview with an Inquirer reporter on Wednesday that he believed leaders were watching to see what Democrats would do first.
“I think they’re just matching spending from the other side. I think that’s all it is,” Fitzpatrick said.
Staff writers Michelle Baruchman and Fallon Roth contributed to this article.
