Incoming Pa. freshman Democrats Bob Brooks, Paige Cognetti help their party chart its path forward on national stage

DENVER — Paige Cognetti and Bob Brooks were elected last week to Congress in two key Pennsylvania swing districts, reclaiming seats that Democrats lost in 2024 as President Donald Trump returned to the White House.

Now set to join a large Democratic majority in a legislative body that values seniority, it’s unclear how much sway they — or anyone in their sizable freshman class — will have as the party charts its path forward with newfound momentum.

But halfway across the country and amid some of Democrats’ top power brokers and rising national stars on Thursday, they were already part of the conversation.

“The people that are coming in in January all want reform and it’s very, very exciting,” Cognetti said at the appropriately named “What’s Next” conference hosted by Majority Democrats in Denver.

On a panel with Brooks and two other incoming Democrats who flipped red seats, Cognetti said she’s already talking to colleagues about setting in motion the anti-corruption agenda she and many others ran on.

“We won’t get every single thing we want right away, but I have very high hopes that we’re going to push through a lot quickly,” she said. “And then we’re laying the groundwork over these years for [even more].”

A mix of victory tour, agenda-setting and — at least for some attendees — testing of the waters for the 2028 presidential primary, the two-day conference was a first-of-its-kind post-election gathering as Democrats transition into what they hope will be a post-Trump era.

It kicked off Thursday by highlighting some of the biggest winners in last week’s midterm elections and key players when Democrats take control of Congress in January.

Brooks and Cognetti followed U.S. Sen.-elect James Talarico, of Texas, and Iowa Gov.-elect Rob Sand — who flipped Republican states for the first time in decades — as well as incoming House Judiciary Committee Chair Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat poised to take a leading role in investigating the Trump administration.

Friday’s agenda was set to feature a who’s who of likely presidential contenders — including Gov. Josh Shapiro and U.S. Sen. Cory Booker. Pennsylvania’s U.S. Reps. Brendan Boyle and Chris Deluzio, each set to see their national profiles skyrocket in the next two years, were also scheduled to attend.

Brooks and Cognetti are among five freshman lawmakers poised to join Pennsylvania’s 17-member U.S. House delegation. Already thrust into the national spotlight, they talked on stage about the lightning-speed transition (they’ve been on Capitol Hill for orientation since last weekend) and what they want to see come out of the largest U.S. House majority since 2009.

“People are tired of the status quo,” Brooks said, noting the high cost of living that was central to his campaign.

In an interview with The Inquirer afterward, Brooks said it was “fun” and he appreciated being a part of the forward-looking conversation for the party, though he quickly turned it back to what he said is his mission.

“This is all about people struggling and getting down to the root of the problem and fixing life for them and making things better,” he said, noting he believes Democrats will coalesce quickly around policies like raising the federal minimum wage and campaign finance reform.

The duo spoke alongside U.S. Sen.-elect Josh Turek, of Iowa, and U.S. Rep.-elect Jamie Ager, of North Carolina, during a short panel discussion hosted by comedian and actor Alex Edelman.

The conversation was mostly lighthearted after the group flew in from Washington that afternoon because of orientation on Capitol Hill. Cognetti said she’s getting a two-bedroom apartment in Washington with U.S. Rep.-elect Rebecca Bennett, who defeated Republican Tom Kean in New Jersey’s 7th Congressional District. Brooks said he’s going solo after a career spent in close-quarters with other firefighters.

In a moment that underscored the changing generation and euphoria about the next era of the party, all four incoming lawmakers laughed when Turek joked that the advice former House House Speaker Nancy Pelosi gave them wasn’t about where to live or where to eat but about what stocks to trade — a reference to criticisms of Pelosi’s growing wealth during her decades in office.

Speeches earlier in the day were generally brief and few in number compared to much larger political gatherings like the Democratic and Republican national conventions. Socializing, networking and media hits — as hundreds of Democratic officials and staffers celebrated and talked about the future — were as much a part of the two-day gathering as the speeches under a giant disco ball in a darkly lit 4,000-person max-capacity venue.

“There’s only one thing I’ve wanted, and I’ve wanted it for 10 years. And that was to burn MAGA to the ground and salt the earth with its ashes,” Sarah Longwell, publisher of The Bulwark, a publication heavily critical of Trump, said as she tried to rally the crowd of hundreds while hundreds more stood outside mingling, drinking and celebrating the midterms.

Cognetti, the mayor of Scranton since 2019, defeated U.S. Rep. Rob Bresnahan by 9 percentage points in the most Trump-friendly swing district in Pennsylvania. Brooks, a statewide union leader and retired firefighter in Bethlehem, took down U.S. Rep. Ryan Mackenzie by more than 12 percentage points in a Lehigh Valley district that had been widely considered the most likely to flip because of the Republican’s 1-point win margin in 2024.

Like other Democrats in Pennsylvania and across the country, their campaigns focused relentlessly on cost of living issues, opposing the war in Iran and what they consider widespread corruption in Trump’s Washington. Cognetti leaned into Bresnahan’s stock trading while in office. Brooks railed against Mackenzie for voting nearly 100% of the time with Trump and Republican leaders.

Now about to join at least 255 Democrats in the majority, it’s unclear how much sway they’ll have in Washington, or where they’ll fit in amid a massive freshman class.

Brooks has signaled he will draw heavily from his experience to focus on labor issues. Cognetti said she wants to tap her background managing Scranton’s budget to make a push for the Appropriations or Budget committees as well as Transportation and Infrastructure.

The larger Democratic agenda remains to be seen as the leaders navigate ideological divisions in their ranks.

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries is expected to make history as the first Black speaker. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, who served as majority leader when Democrats last controlled the Senate, faces challenge from the left from U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland for the role this time.

At least in the few days since the election, both moderate and progressive factions of the party have appeared aligned on tackling affordability concerns first and foremost. That includes plans to restore upcoming cuts to Medicaid and recent cuts to SNAP food assistance, bring back the Affordable Care Act tax credits that expired nearly a year ago, eliminate Trump’s tariffs and wind down the hostilities in Iran.

Cognetti, in an interview after her panel, said even if a stock-trading ban is part of that agenda after receiving widespread support among Democrats, she will keep pushing for other heavier lifts, like term limits.

“You can see in the class, this really is a generational shift,” Cognetti said. “There are a lot of new folks coming in. I think we can set rules and expectations for ourselves and each other that will show that we’re serious about reforming this body and making sure it’s responsible to the American people.”

Democratic officials and campaign operatives who spoke at the conference Thursday offered few specific policy prescriptions, though strategists whose jobs it is to pour over election data emphasized the consensus — voters were fed up with Trump and rising prices.

Stephanie Valencia, cofounder and president of a firm that focuses on research and polling of Latino voters, spoke of the election as a definitive example of Latino voters being a key swing constituency now and into the future. About a third of Latino voters “sit in the persuadable middle” and don’t fit into traditional ideological categories, she said.

Talarico, the first Democrat elected to the U.S. Senate in Texas since 1988 in large part because he won over Latinos who voted for Trump, in his speech compared the moment to the time of President Lyndon Johson, who once held the seat that Talarico is about to step into.

Johnson passed generation-defining laws to create the modern social safety net and civil rights. Now Democrats have a “mandate the size of Texas” to do something similar, Talarico said. He said the list includes legislation that will undo political corruption, ban gerrymandering, enact universal healthcare, spur housing development, regulate data centers and give every American a financial stake in the artificial intelligence gold rush.

“We are within striking distance of a supermajority,” Talarico said, referring to Democrat’s new optimism to capture more than 60 U.S. Senate seats in the 2028 election. “And a supermajority requires a super agenda. We must deliver immediate, bold relief during this affordability crisis.”