U.S. Rep. Matt Cartwright publicly conceded defeat Wednesday and said he had no regrets about the re-election race he conducted or the way he served his district.
“I voted according to my conscience. I'm proud of the work that I did,” Cartwright said in a telephone interview. “I made some fantastic friends along the way. I went down swinging as hard as I could for the regular working people of this country and of northeastern Pennsylvania.”
In his bid for a seventh term, Cartwright, 63, a Moosic Democrat, lost to Republican construction and traffic signal installation company CEO Rob Bresnahan, 34, of Dallas Twp. Cartwright said he called Bresnahan on Tuesday evening to congratulate him.
Bresnahan had 192,784 votes, Cartwright, 185,360, in the 8th Congressional District contest, according to unofficial results from the election Tuesday.
Cartwright was one of two incumbent Democratic eastern Pennsylvania House members who lost Tuesday. Republican state Rep. Ryan Mackenzie defeated U.S. Rep. Susan Wild to win a Lehigh Valley congressional seat. Both victories boost Republican chances to hold onto control of the U.S. House, though many races in other states remain undecided.
Cartwright first won a seat in the House in 2012, defeating future Republican Lackawanna County Commissioner Laureen Cummings to win the 17th Congressional District seat.
Redistricting in 2018 and 2022 rewrote boundary lines and re-numbered the district and narrowed the Democratic voter registration advantage.
Cartwright won by narrowing margins in his last several elections against Republicans – 23,040 votes over John Chrin in 2018, 12,221 against Jim Bognet in 2020 and 7,026 against Bognet in 2022.
Cartwright said President Donald Trump’s presence on the ballot made a difference. Bresnahan did a better job tying himself to Trump’s policies than Bognet did in 2020, he said. His opponent also did a good job tying him to an unpopular president, Joe Biden, he said.
The congressman agreed inflation hurt his chances.
“Oh, there's no question that people are still hurting in northeastern Pennsylvania,” Cartwright said. “I have attempted to express that I recognize that and that I have a different idea of who the villain is behind the inflation.”
Nonetheless, inflation’s influence revived a political tradition, he said.
“The bottom line is, when you’re dissatisfied with the way your life is going, and you’re dissatisfied with the direction of the country, you blame whoever is in office,” he said.
In the last decade, Cartwright strongly championed the restoration of passenger train service between Scranton and New York City. As a result, the service is nearer to happening than ever before.
Just last week, a Federal Railroad Administration announced a $9 million grant to pay for new railroad ties and bridge repairs on the Pennsylvania side.
Cartwright doesn’t think Bresnahan will allow the train to languish.
“I suspect he will be for it,” Cartwright said. “Rob Bresnahan, he's a smart guy, and he's going to see the advantages for this region from the train.”
Cartwright said he plans to “stay engaged on it myself, even out of office, because it can't hurt to have more advocates.”
Cartwright said Amtrak’s and the Federal Railroad Administration’s enthusiasm for the project will assure its construction.
“They see it as a model for the development of future new lines, and so the rail project has taken on a momentum among the infrastructure, ecology that is going to be hard to undo if, even if somebody wanted to, obviously,” he said.
If the Trump administration tries to derail it, Cartwright said he’ll call on Trump supporters he’s friendly with to lobby the president.
“I have an awful lot of mutual friends with President Trump who really care about the success of our rail project, and they will not be bashful about giving voice to the importance of the rail project around here,” he said.
Cartwright declined to second-guess his re-election campaign strategy much.
“Woulda, shoulda, coulda,” he said. “This was a big money race.”
As of last week, the candidates and outside groups supporting them had spent at least $35.6 million -- $19.8 million on the Democratic side, $15.9 million on the Republican.
“I spent so much time raising money I have to have my cell phone surgically disengaged from the side of my head,” Cartwright said. “The Republican super PACs leveled all sorts of charges against me, and probably the biggest canard that they threw at us was that I voted for money for illegal immigrants to the tune of $4 billion. I didn't vote for one penny for illegal immigrants.”
He declined to rule out running for public office again someday.
“I won't say never, but being a member of Congress is really, really hard work,” Cartwright said. “It's the hardest I've ever worked in my life. I was honored that the citizens of northeastern Pennsylvania picked me to do it. I meant to bring credit to myself for doing a good job, and I worked as hard as I could at it. And I'm looking forward to some time off from government service.”
