For a fourth straight reelection campaign, U.S. Rep. Matt Cartwright faces an opponent and hostile outside groups spending lots of money to get rid of him.
Cartwright, a wealthy but union-endorsed Democrat who’s no slouch at raising campaign funds himself, laments all the opposition cash but said he understands why he’s always a bullseye.
“I take it as a badge of honor because I must be doing something right to anger the forces arrayed against regular working people,” Cartwright said in an interview in a Wilkes-Barre union hall.
In his eyes, these forces represent “massive corporations, pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies, banks, Wall Street people that don't give a hoot about the regular working person,” he said.
“And I put my thumb in their eye every chance I get in Congress, and they know it, and I think that bothers them, and so they're deploying money against me,” Cartwright said.
His opponent, Republican Rob Bresnahan, sees an entrenched congressman who repeatedly votes against the 8th Congressional District’s interests by voting with his party all the time.
“You can't go down to D.C. and vote with your party nearly 100% of the time and say, ‘This is what's best for Washington, this is what's best for northeastern Pennsylvania,’” Bresnahan said.
The 8th District, where about 765,000 people live, consists of all of Lackawanna, Wayne and Pike counties; roughly the eastern half of Luzerne County, including Wilkes-Barre, Pittston and Hazleton; and all of Monroe County, except for Polk and Eldred townships and part of Ross Township.
A hot race in a district moving rightward
The contest between Bresnahan and Cartwright ranks as one of the hottest in the country. That’s partly because Cartwright represents a district that voted for Donald Trump for president in 2016 and 2020.
“I am the only member of the Democratic delegation to Congress … (to) successfully defend my district four times in a double Trump (victory) district,” he said. “And I suggest to you that the reason is that I viewed Donald Trump's election as a cry for help. I have never condemned anybody for voting for Donald Trump.”
Cartwright has won, though by shrinking margins – 23,000 votes over former Wall Street banker John Chrin in 2018 and 12,000 votes in 2020 and 7,000 votes in 2022 against political consultant Jim Bognet.
In 2022, redistricting rewrote the 8th to be more Republican. Since then, the Democratic voter registration edge has shrunk even further – from 9 to 5 percentage points.
Given the trends, three congressional trackers – Cook Political Report, Sabato’s Crystal Ball and Inside Elections – rate the race either a toss-up or only tilting Democratic.
Spending on the race hasn’t shrunk.
In 2022, the candidates and outside groups spent $21.7 million on the race, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, which monitors election spending and fundraising.
As of Friday, the total for this race was $32.8 million spent or soon to be spent through Election Day, according to National Public Radio.
All for an office that pays $174,000 a year.
Cartwright: Hard work vs. inheritance
Cartwright, 63, a lawyer by training, lives in Moosic in Lackawanna County and is seeking a seventh two-year term. He studied and worked “incredibly hard” to become a lawyer who can “work with juries and stick up for regular working people in hard cases,” he said.
“And it's like anything else, if you work as hard as you can to make yourself the best at what you do, sure the remuneration will come, and it did,” he said. “And that's just a big, big difference from being handed a fortune (like Bresnahan).”
As a congressman, he’s risen into House Democratic leadership, then to chairmanship of a House Appropriations Committee subcommittee. He remains its top Democratic member with Republicans in control.
He frequently boasts about the millions of dollars he’s brought home for local projects. With the help of President Joe Biden’s transportation bill, Lackawanna and Monroe counties stand poised to host a new Amtrak train route between Scranton and New York City in a few years.
Cartwright has championed that project since taking office in 2013.
Bresnahan: I worked hard, too
Bresnahan said he wasn’t handed anything. His grandfather, Walt Kuharchik, made him work for everything, he said.
Bresnahan, 34, lives in Dallas Township in Luzerne County. From about 8 years old, he said, he grew up in and learned his family’s construction business, Kuharchik Construction in Exeter, and its traffic control systems business, Wyoming Electric & Signals. He can drive heavy equipment and fix traffic signals.
While still a student at the University of Scranton, he took over as the companies’ chief financial officer and found them struggling with millions of dollars in debt.
After college, at age 23, he became its chief executive officer. Since then, he’s grown the companies from about 50 employees to more than 165, who belong to unions, he said.
Bresnahan didn’t belong to a union but said he served as chairman of International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 163 apprenticeship program and trustee of its health and wellness program.
In 2016, he started RPB Ventures, which bought and renovated several buildings in downtown Pittston.
In June 2023, Bresnahan sold Kuharchik and Wyoming Electric for an undisclosed amount to Midwestern Electric LLC, owned by CAI Capital Partners, a private investment company.
Cartwright turned what he calls a “shocking” sale into a campaign issue.
“He turned it over to private equity and he took the bag of coins from faceless, nameless strangers with absolutely no commitment or care about our local community, about our local people,” Cartwright said. “It's the same old story that has played out in northeastern Pennsylvania for generation after generation after generation.”
Decades ago, anthracite coal mine owners with far-away mansions exploited local workers, he said.
“They sucked the money out of this area and brought it home to other places out of state. And then when the anthracite ran out, they closed up shop and left enduring scars on our landscape for us to clean up and them not to pay for. And they left people hunting around for other jobs,” he said.
Bresnahan gives Cartwright’s attack line an “A for effort on creativity.”
“I'm still an owner of the company. The largest independent shareholder of the entity is me,” he said.
Bresnahan said he’s on the board and sold the companies because of the opportunity to grow them.
“I was very specific on the partnership that I wanted to have. I mean, we were two companies about the about the same size that we merged now into one, stronger, better, faster machine (so) that we can continue to provide for our customers,” he said. “This should not be viewed negatively.”
Campaign donor turned competitor
Bresnahan, who contributed $2,000 to Cartwright’s 2022 campaign and $1,000 to Bognet’s, said he gave to Cartwright because the congressman backed a since-abandoned natural gas plant near Nanticoke, the passenger train and a Susquehanna River levee for West Pittston.
Since then, Cartwright has only toed the Democratic line in Washington and voted against border security, he said.
“My job is to advocate for the people of northeastern Pennsylvania,” he said. “I love the people … This is a way I can give back to northeastern Pennsylvania in a totally different way.”
Which Cartwright says he already does. He voted for a cap on senior citizen payments for Medicare and allowing Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices. He offered a bill to control price gouging that contributed to inflation and advocates for public education and union rights, he said.
“That is the American dream, and without organized labor and public education, there is no American Dream. There is no middle class,” he told union workers at an Oct. 10 news conference at Sheet Metal Workers Local 44’s hall in Wilkes-Barre.
Voter views
Several unions endorsed him that day.
“Every year, Matt brings home huge federal investments to our areas. Because of him, we're repairing our roads and bridges. We're pouring billions into public transportation and rail, and I'm proud to say our smart members represent all of this is creating good union jobs,” said Warren Faust, president of the Northeast Pennsylvania Building and Construction Trade Council. “Matt doesn't answer to anyone other than the people of northeastern Pennsylvania.”
Mike Nelson, 63, a retired United Auto Workers laborer who lives in Dunmore, wore a “Trump Is A Scab” T-shirt to the news conference.
“That Cartwright's a great guy,” Nelson said. “He has walked the picket line … Hey, the guy does everything for this area.”
At the Six String Saloon in Hanover Twp. that evening, Bresnahan ran through his biography a bit before launching into criticisms of the nation under Democratic rule – inflation, fentanyl overdoses, more than $35 trillion in debt, rising credit card debt and illegal immigration.
At the southern border, Bresnahan said, he saw “50 migrants walk right around the wall” and surrender to border patrol agents.
“The next day we flew back, … the same person we saw walk around the wall at the processing center, got on the airplane in front of me,” he said.
He never mentions Cartwright, but he does blame the congressman.
Listening from a barstool, Larry Nagle, 70, a retired information technology employee who lives near Nanticoke, said he’s a former Democrat who twice voted for Trump and for Cartwright two years ago.
He’ll vote for Trump, but not Cartwright on Election Day.
“I want the country to be able to prosper, and he seems to be too far left to do that,” he said. “He seems to vote with Nancy Pelosi all the time. I don't agree with Nancy Pelosi 99% of the time."
Nagle doesn’t know much about Bresnahan, but said he likes “what he's saying so far.”
“I'm just to the point where I'm tired of going to the grocery store and paying so much money and walking out with two little bags and I have nothing,” Nagle said. “My car insurance, my home insurance, everything is double, and I'm just tired of it … I mean, we shouldn't have to live this way.”
WVIA will produce a live broadcast of the debate for Pennsylvania's 8th Congressional District on Tuesday at 7 p.m. This event will take place at the Burke Auditorium on the campus of King’s College in Wilkes-Barre.
