Top Pennsylvania Republicans are projecting relative calm amid 2026 national party panic

The same week Republican National Committee chair Joe Gruters said history predicted “almost certain defeat” for his party in the 2026 midterms, Pennsylvania Republicans partying in Midtown Manhattan projected relative calm about the election cycle.

Gruters, President Donald Trump’s handpicked chair to run the party, said on a conservative radio station last week: “It’s not a secret. There’s no sugarcoating it. It’s a pending, looming disaster heading our way. We are facing almost certain defeat.”

He added that the goal is to win and he “liked our chances in the midterms,” but noted “only three times in the last hundred years has the incumbent party been successful winning a midterm.”

Pennsylvania could decide which party controls the U.S. House next year, as Democrats eye four congressional districts that Republicans recently flipped while the GOP fights to maintain its majority.

But Pennsylvania Republicans in New York City for the annual Pennsylvania Society glitzy gathering of politicos last weekend had a less hair-on-fire view.

“At this point when I was running [for Senate in 2024], the betting market said there was a 3% chance I was going to win,” Sen. Dave McCormick (R., Pa.) said after addressing a bipartisan audience at the Pennsylvania Manufacturer’s Association luncheon on Saturday.

“We’re a million miles from Election Day, and we’ve got a great track record of things to talk about and a great vision for how the president’s policies are going to make life better for working families,” McCormick said. “We just got to go out and make that message happen, but also continue to make the policies that are going to make that a reality happen.”

The political environment was, of course, far more favorable to Republicans in 2024, when Trump won Pennsylvania by a larger margin than he did in 2016. But with Republicans in power and popular Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro on the ballot for reelection, the headwinds in 2026 in the Keystone State are different.

Pennsylvania GOP chair Greg Rothman, in an interview outside the PMA event on Saturday, called Shapiro “one of the greatest politicians of my generation” but noted that upsets have happened across various political environments in state history.

“Anything can happen and the voters are smart, and all I can do is prepare the party to ride the waves and ignore the crashes, but I’m optimistic,” he added.

Shapiro will likely face a GOP challenge from State Treasurer Stacy Garrity, who is a popular politician in her own right and holds the record for receiving the most votes of any candidate for statewide office in Pennsylvania.

Meanwhile, Rothman predicted that the four Pennsylvania congressional incumbents running for reelection in swing districts will sink or swim based on how Trump and his policies land with voters come November.

“They will be judged by the national economy and by immigration,” he said, and by Trump’s ability to end some international conflicts.

But U.S. Rep. Rob Bresnahan, a GOP incumbent running for reelection in Pennsylvania’s Eighth Congressional District, which includes Scranton, had a more local view of how to win in 2026.

“Everything about our job as a member of Congress is about northeastern Pa.,” Bresnahan said.

“Northeastern Pennsylvania has always been our North Star. We know our district. We are out in our district. We’ve done over 250 public events. Our constituency case work is, in my opinion, one of the best offices in the country.”

» READ MORE: A year ahead of 2026 midterms, Trump backs Scott Perry, Rob Bresnahan, and other Pennsylvania Republicans

Bresnahan appeared at a rally with Trump in Mount Pocono last week. He was also one of just 20 House Republicans to sign a successful discharge petition to force a vote for collective bargaining to be restored for federal workers.

“At the end of the day that might have been going against party leadership, but it was what’s right for northeastern Pennsylvania,” he said.

Democrats have begun a full court press. That was evident at the Pennsylvania Society, where attendees seen mingling with other politicians included: Janelle Stelson, who is running for a second time against U.S. Rep. Scott Perry in the 10th Congressional District, as well as firefighter Bob Brooks and former federal prosecutor Ryan Croswell, both of whom are running for the Democratic nomination to take on U.S. Rep. Ryan Mackenzie in the Seventh.

Bresnahan’s challenger, Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti, also attended the soiree and walked through the Rainbow Room atop Rockefeller Center with U.S. Sen. Chris Coons (D., Del.) on Friday night. Coons said the time is now for Democrats to get involved in these races.

“Given the margin, if there were to be four new Democrats in the House this cycle, as there were in 2018, that’d be the difference maker for the country,” Coons added.

Staff writer Gillian McGoldrick contributed to this article.