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Cartwright lost latest re-election bid, but says he might run again

Congressman Matt Cartwright greets supporters at the Waldorf Social Club in Scranton on Nov. 5, 2024.
Roger DuPuis
/
WVIA News
Congressman Matt Cartwright and his wife, Marion Munley, greet supporters at the Waldorf Social Club in Scranton on Election Day, Nov. 5, 2024

More than a month after losing his latest re-election bid, U.S. Rep. Matt Cartwright can joke a bit.

In his most recent campaign, he raised $9.5 million, a lot of it through telephone calls during the 20 months leading up to Election Day.

“Which is why, I think I told you the last time we talked, I had to have my phone surgically removed from the side of my head,” Cartwright cracked.

The six-term Democratic congressman received 189,411 votes, far more than any previous election, but Republican businessman Rob Bresnahan got 195,663, or 6,252 more.

Cartwright said Bresnahan ran a campaign that made him feel “like I was playing checkers and my opponent was playing chess.”

On Jan. 3, Bresnahan will take the oath of office in the U.S. House, joining a slim five-vote Republican majority.

Cartwright, 63, will contemplate his future. Recently, the 8th Congressional District representative from Moosic sat for an interview with WVIA News to discuss what’s ahead and reflect on his 12 years in Washington, D.C.

This transcript of the question-and-answer session was edited for clarity and brevity.

On running again

WVIA: Have you gone through the numbers or done any research as to what happened, why this time you lost? Because you've had tough elections before.

Cartwright: Sure, gosh, the last eight years, I've been in pitched battles, and we've come out on top every other time. This one was harder because we had headwinds from the top of the ticket. We did do the math, and the Harris-Walz ticket lost (the 8th district) by 8.6 (percentage points) and that was just too great a weight to carry ... We lost by 1.6 ... The bad news is I didn't get re-elected; the good news is I was one of the top over-performers ... in the country. I think I was tied for number four, five, over-performing Democrat.

WVIA: Well, then will you come back (and run again) two years from now?

Cartwright: That is indeed a question, and I haven't ruled it out. I've committed not to make any decisions for at least another month … Whoever does it, and it might be I, has to be ready to be a battleground Democrat. And it's a different animal being in a pitched battle every two years, because not only do you have to do the work and make a good account of yourself, representing the people of Northeastern Pennsylvania, but you also have to raise a truckload of money.

On campaigns' cost

WVIA: While we're on that topic, can Congress do anything about this? This election was extraordinarily expensive everywhere. How would we ever get all this money out of elections? Or should we?

Cartwright: I think I've told you that one of my best friends in high school was a Canadian Ukrainian by the name of Borys Wrzesnewskyj. And as it happened, he and I were the only two to go into federal politics … I in the U.S. Congress, and he in the Canadian federal parliament in Ottawa. We got talking about all of this fundraising that I have to do, and he told me they have contribution limits in Canada ... He told me his last contribution limit was $60,000 Canadian … The whole campaign is what he was allowed to spend 60,000 Canadian dollars.

I could raise that in an afternoon and spend the rest of my time being a responsible legislator … The outside spending in independent expenditures is rampant in our elections and so I was thinking, alright, so if you have a $60,000 campaign limit, what happens is the candidate with the best ideas wins, rather than the most ads or the most compelling ads. And what a delight that would be. I despair of that ever happening because you're asking the people who are elected to change the rules to make it easier for challengers to come after them. They'll never do it.

On the Republican sweep

WVIA: Do you think, given the results and how soundly the Democrats were defeated, that they have some rethinking to do in terms of the way they approach policy and elections? I'm a little wary of even asking the question, only because the races were so close in most cases.

Cartwright: Almost always, the party that wins feels like they have a mandate, and they're usually wrong, and they suppose they won for this or that reason, and it's something completely different. And they make this mistake at their peril, because they find out at the next election, it wasn't about what they thought it was about.

WVIA: In this case, it was the economy, right, more than anything else?

Cartwright: Absolutely, it's always the economy. But the voters make a mistake when they think they know who's responsible for the ills of the economy. It was actually the Federal Reserve at fault for not acting quickly enough to curb inflation. The president doesn't have that much to do with causing inflation or curbing it. Jerome Powell, the fed chair, if he had acted more quickly to raise interest rates and hold down inflation, it wouldn't have got out of hand the way it did. And when it did get out of hand, it gave license to Republican politicians to run around saying, "Oh, it was all the Biden spending, the Bipartisan Infrastructure law, the Inflation Reduction Act, the Chips and Science Act," all of which was hogwash, utter hogwash, because most of that money had not yet even been spent. So if the money's not spent, it's not causing inflation.

WVIA: Did you always think your district was going to be so competitive? I mean, it's changed over time. It was a different district from when you ran first, and quite different.

Cartwright: No I didn't, and it's all about Donald Trump. Donald Trump is a very charismatic politician. That used to be a compliment. I'm not sure what it is now, but he has this ability to attract voters that one doesn't expect these days … The feeling was in the summer and in the fall of 2020 that President Trump was circling the drain. And you had Republican politicians attempting to distance themselves from Donald Trump, and you had a general malaise among the low-propensity voters that came out in 2016 to vote for him. And I think they stayed home.

They came back with a vengeance in 2024 and that's what happened. In my own race, I must say, I have no regrets with the race we ran, because I set an all-time record for my vote total … So we didn't lose our people, and in fact, we added to them, but over 20,000 new voters came out that went the other way, and these were the low- propensity voters. It's a fascinating subject, really.

What do you do about low propensity voters? Pollsters don't know what to do with them. They don't poll for them. They're not likely voters … I think they did something smart. I definitely came away from that election feeling like I was playing checkers, and my opponent was playing chess.

On why he ran for Congress

WVIA: When you started out in your first run, what did you think you could accomplish? And are you satisfied that you accomplished any of that? What were your big goals like back then?

Cartwright: When I first ran, I had done about 24 years of courtroom, jury trial work, and I was ready for a change. At first, I was awful doing jury trials. They hand you cases that nobody else wants to do when you first start out, which is right and proper. And you cut your teeth on those cases. I learned to get quite good at jury cases, not because of some flourish of genius, but because I worked really hard on them. I bludgeoned my cases to death, and I won most of them. In fact, I went my last 12 years without losing a jury case ... And I tried a lot of hard cases, but by dint of really hard work, and it was wearing me out, and I was ready for something new.

WVIA: Somebody's going to hear that and say, "Oh, you went to Congress. It's easy there."

Cartwright: The joke was on me. The truth is I had always admired the people that went to Congress. I know they are universally reviled across America, but I always admired the people that did that work and set policy and figured out how to reach sensible compromises and stuck up for the folks at home, and I wanted to try that. I knew that Northeastern Pennsylvania needed a strong advocate. We had had people like that, Joe McDade, Daniel Flood, people that had done a nice job of bringing money home to supplant the money that was lost with the waning of the coal mining industry.

WVIA: Paul Kanjorski, too, right?

Cartwright: Paul Kanjorski did fine. And I felt like I wanted to continue that work of successful congressmen that helped fill the economic gap that had been created by the absence of the coal mining industry, and then after NAFTA, the exodus of small manufacturing from Northeastern Pennsylvania. The congressman can't be expected to fix the whole local economy, but there's so much you can do, and I saw that effective members of Congress, like those three we've mentioned, had done a good job.

And I felt like a hard working guy named Cartwright could do a good job, and I meant to make a good account of myself. And that's what brought me out. And you're right, I did feel like it was, it was going to be a Democratic district for a long time, but everything changed when this charismatic character Trump showed up.

On his record

WVIA: Are you happy with what you were able to accomplish in 12 years?

Cartwright: I am.

WVIA: What do you think were the achievements that you're most proud of, the major achievements?

Cartwright: Everywhere I go now, people are … so sad, and they hug me as if someone died in my family. And in fact, in D.C., I think we had no fewer than seven departing member receptions. They were so sad. I started to call them dearly departing member receptions. But I don't feel that way. I feel blessed. I feel like I did make a good account of myself. I did work as hard as ever I could. I passed 16 substantive bills into law.

WVIA: Talk about a couple of them. Which ones stick with you?

Cartwright: Well, probably the biggest one was the Camp Lejeune Justice Act. That was a tall order to pass that one. It took me four years.

WVIA: That's the bill that helped the veterans who were at Camp Lejeune for the 36-year period and drank the water there and got sick a lot.

Cartwright: A 34-year period between 1953 and 1987. They measured the volatile organic compound content of that water at one point at 3,400 times the safe level of those compounds. And the thing about those compounds is they were known carcinogens.

And the Marines and the Marine families and the employees at Camp Lejeune came down with 11 forms of cancer. And remember, there are families there and pregnant wives who had miscarriages and stillbirths and produced deformed babies.

It was an unspeakable tragedy, and because of a quirk in North Carolina law, none of the victims could bring a claim. They could have done so in any other state in the United States, but because of a law in North Carolina called the statute of repose that applied to Federal Tort Claims Act cases … You couldn't get your day in court. And so my bill simply … at least gave them a shot to attempt to prove their claims.

WVIA: It ended up getting fastened to another bill, right?

Cartwright: It got cobbled onto the PACT Act, … which was the burn pits bill. And, of course, you had to gather bipartisan support ... And I knew I had to win over Republicans, and I got really good at that over the years. That's why I was able to pass 16 substantive bills into law because I made some lasting friendships with Republicans.

On reviving passenger rail service

WVIA: I think many people will probably say that -- especially if it comes to fruition and it seems to be on track -- the Scranton to New York City train may go down as the biggest thing you ever accomplished. I don't remember you talking about that as a campaign issue back in 2012 but were you already thinking about it?

Cartwright: I wasn’t, and it wasn't a campaign issue. My big campaign in 2012 was the primary (election against incumbent Democratic Rep. Tim Holden) ... Rail wasn't even on my radar at the time, and I won that primary. And then after that, in the summertime of 2012 Larry Malski, Dominic Keating, Bob Hay, all officials of the Pennsylvania Northeast Regional Rail Authority, landed on me like I was a loose football. And they weren't having any luck getting a champion among the politicos, and they filled me in on the whole rail project, and what the dream was.

WVIA: It was dead when they (the local railroad officials) did that.

Cartwright: Larry had done something brilliant, though, and it ended up being a huge, huge advantage. I'm sure he told you. He did things to make sure that the right-of-way stayed in public hands. And that has distinguished our project from so many others, because the others are owned by for-profit railroad companies, Norfolk-Southern, CSX. And these people are, these companies are very difficult to do business with under the law.

WVIA: I don't remember if it was your first term or your second, you suggested that maybe Amtrak would be the way to go.

Cartwright: Early on, I was all excited that Amtrak could just decide where they wanted to go, and (an Amtrak spokesman) wasn't disabusing me of that misconception. And then I realize it's Amtrak, but the Federal Railroad Administration is the one with the money and the decision-making authority about where the money goes. And right now, it's looking really, really good.

WVIA: I know Biden obviously was a proponent of Amtrak because he'd ridden it for so long. Do you think when the funding bill came along, the infrastructure bill, did you help make sure that money was there? Or was he just so committed to that, that that was going to happen, and he knew what Amtrak needed, because he'd been a rider for so long. And the fact that he's from Scranton, that was kind of our lucky break.

Cartwright: There's no denying that that helped, whether he pushed it is open to question. People knew he was from Scranton, so those around him felt like that ought to be a priority … For the longest time that Bipartisan infrastructure law was being written in the House by Peter DeFazio, who was the chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee from Oregon … And then all of a sudden, the rug got pulled out from under him, and it was Chuck Schumer in the Senate captaining this effort.

Soon as I found that out, I called up my friend Joe Crowley, who was no longer in Congress … And so I said, "Joe, you New Yorkers run in packs. Can you get me an interview with Chuck Schumer?" … And anyway, the fruit of that Zoom call was that I asked him for $2 billion extra in the new rail starts. And Schumer said, "Yeah, we can do that." And remember, Schumer wants rail through Northeastern Pennsylvania, because that's how rail can get into the Southern Tier of New York who are his constituents as well.

On Trump's plans

WVIA: We have a change of administration right now that's threatening to undo various legislation. Do you think that the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act is one of those that they're going to try to undo, and do you think the (rail) project is threatened?

Cartwright: That's a smart question, and one that I've thought about, and so have a lot of people. I think on balance, no, it is not that big of a threat, because there are so many Republicans that want this to happen, Republican politicians. I mean, probably the biggest value that I have added to this is creating this big coalition of politicians in Northeastern Pennsylvania, people from every level and both sides of the aisle want this project in our area, and that's before you get to the business owners that all want it.

WVIA: A lot about some of the climate-change stuff is actually benefiting Republican districts as much as any place.

Cartwright: Climate change, you know, sustainable energy projects from the IRA (Inflation Reduction Act) have already scored something like $380 billion in private investment so far. It will take a gargantuan effort to undo these things, and I suspect that the efforts to undo them will not get very far.

WVIA: How do you think Congress did in your time in office? And I ask that because I remember when Obama ran the first time for president, he repeatedly said that we know what the major problems are, and we've basically done nothing about them for decades. Did we get any closer in terms on some of our major problems?

Cartwright: Well, the most daunting problem, of course, is climate change. We thought we were kind of immune to that sort of thing here in Northeastern Pennsylvania, that we would some someday become waterfront property. But we weren't immune. It was creating floods in our area … And it's not just a transitory fact of a flood and the property damage that flows from it. It's also flood insurance that's going to cause a lot of pain. One of the greatest things that Paul Kanjorski did was he added to the height of the levee along the Susquehanna River.

And we thought, well, that, you know, if they measure 100-year floods, we're all good. In Northeastern Pennsylvania, it turned out we weren't. And in fact, because of the frequency and intensity of storms and floods, the Army Corps has looked at the floodplains in Luzerne County, and there are a lot of places that they have now ruled into a floodplain where there are people living and have been living their entire adult lives. Seniors in their homes that all of a sudden are going to be required to buy flood insurance.

WVIA: If they don't buy it, they won't get covered. If they get flooded, they won't have an option.

Cartwright: That’s what I said. And then I found out, well, if their mortgage is not yet fully paid off, it is a condition of their mortgage that if they are required to buy NFIP flood insurance, failure to do so will be a reason for foreclosure of the mortgage and the banks are required to foreclose … Flood insurance is not cheap. You're talking about eight, nine, 10 thousand (dollars) a year on people who are barely making ends meet. The pain is real, and it's because of climate change.

Now, when I first got to Congress, it was forbidden for Republican members to utter the phrases climate change or global warming, I remember that we made fun of them because of that. Over time, the needle moved … And I think a lot of it had to do Borys with that American business was getting it. American businesspeople are intelligent, smart. They pay attention, and they have assets to protect … And part of it is they care about having a sustainable climate.

But the bigger part is they want to attract really smart young people to come work at their companies, and they want to say the right things that sound good to those young people, either way … (The Inflation Reduction Act is) the biggest investment in the war against climate change that has ever occurred in the world. And I'm very proud that I voted for it. I don't think it had a single Republican vote.

On saving Social Security

WVIA: I've asked this question at debates, you've heard it, the one thing I've not seen progress on is Social Security and Medicare … After this next house session is over, we're going to be eight years away from real problems.

Cartwright: In 2014, I became a co-sponsor of Social Security 2100, and that's the one that would adjust the cap so that people making over $400,000 a year have to keep paying into FICA (the Social Security payroll tax fund).

WVIA: When does something happen? Because it's only going to get worse.

Cartwright: It's only going to get worse ... And you're running out of runway, yeah. And so all of these politicians that claim, well, I won't touch Social Security. That's so misleading as really to be a fraud, because not touching it will be fatal to it. We have to improve it. We have to figure out extra income streams to it ... People don't realize that once you hit about $160,000 a year (in income), you stop paying into FICA. People don't realize it, because they don't make $160,000 a year, and so they've never had that happen that once you hit $160,000 you stop paying into FICA.

... So, the idea is, leave it at $160,000 but once you get to the point where you're making 400 grand, start paying in again. Because there are very few people making 400 grand and more who can't absorb paying FICA contributions. They do that, that's going to extend the life of Social Security for a very long time. If they don't do it, you're right, we start to look at cuts by 2034.

WVIA: Have you ever talked to talk to House leadership about about that? About, let's do this now.

Cartwright: Oh, yes, I have to no avail.

WVIA: They're just afraid to touch it, because they're running for elections every two years?

Cartwright: No, I think (there are) other priorities for where the money's going, like the Child Tax Credit, that's a good idea, too.

On bipartisanship

WVIA: So what's the answer to more bipartisanship? I mean, are we stuck this way forever?

Cartwright: There's more bipartisanship than meets the eye right now. I have dear friends on the other side of the aisle. They're all wet on all manner of issues, and I tell them that. And then we talk about sports, and we talk about fishing and hunting, and we talk about things that we can get along about. And that's why I was so successful in passing bills through Congress. It's like any kind of relationship, you have to work at it.

WVIA: But on an issue like climate change, there's just no, seems to be no middle ground … Republicans all voted against it. Democrats all voted for it.

Cartwright: We talked about how climate change is a hard problem. The other one was health care. When I showed up in Congress, in fact, this is something I did campaign on … in my primary in 2012 … sticking up for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act ... That was another thing that Republicans were forbidden to be happy about ... It wasn't so much the needle moved with Republicans in Congress, it was the needle with the American public moved.

At first, people were so mad in 2010 they threw legions of Democrats out of Congress, Paul Kanjorski included … And in fact, there was violence at town halls in March of 2010. So fast-forward about five, six, seven years, all of a sudden, people are generally satisfied with the Affordable Care Act.

On deporting immigrants, tariffs

WVIA: Do you think Trump will actually carry out some of the things that he talked about during the campaign, the mass deportations, targeting enemies. Are you seriously worried about those? Or are there enough brakes in Congress to limit what he might do?

Cartwright: I think he will deport a lot of people ... Obama deported more people than any other American president up to his time. Whether Trump deports 11 million souls from our shores, I don't think he can. I think he's already complained that he doesn't have enough manpower to do it.

WVIA: Oh, but they're talking about building larger camps and hiring more agents, border agents and all that and using the National Guard. And so they seem to have a whole plan on how to go about this.

Cartwright: But then you have the Department of Government Efficiency that wants to fire everybody from the government, and they're at cross purposes. What I worry about is inflation under the coming administration.

So many of the things they want to do are going to badly boost inflation, tariffs. Adding a tariff means that if it's a 25% tariff, and you want to buy that good that came from overseas someplace, you the consumer are paying 25% more. That's bad inflation, and that's caused by government action.

And then tax cuts. Trump's talking about more tax cuts for billionaires. Tax cuts are a stimulus for the economy. If the economy is already suffering from inflation because it's overheated … inflation gets worse because of tax cuts for the 1%. And then deportations, if you deport the people who are picking our vegetables and putting roofs on people's houses and doing the jobs nobody else wants to do, all of a sudden more expenses go into hiring the labor force to do those things.

Your lettuce costs more, your vegetables cost more, your roofs cost more. All of these things are horribly inflationary. And it's almost ironic, because it was the current inflation that I think got Trump elected for a second term.

WVIA: What's your take on your opponent? What do you make of him, other than what your campaign said about him?

Cartwright: Well, I think he's headed into some rough waters, because the Republican (House) majority is ... such a slim majority ... It puts Rob in a tough position, because they're going to be putting an enormous amount of pressure on him to vote for these partisan Republican bills when he promised to be anything but that during the campaign. And I think he meant it, but all of a sudden he's going to be in a position where he'll be persona non grata in the Republican conference if he's the one that spoils all of these plans that Mike Johnson has.

WVIA: What's going to go into your deciding whether to run again? Do you feel like you have left things left undone?

Cartwright: I’m going to stay engaged in the rail project ... I've learned so much about it, and I know all of the players in it, and I think more advocates for the project is better. But to answer your question, it kind of depends on what the alternative is. I've had some interesting and attractive offers. I've had two professorships offered to me already, and I'm considering those.

WVIA: How about going back to the law?

Cartwright: I definitely will dust off my law degree ... I'm committed not to make any decisions for a couple of months after the election.

Borys joins WVIA News from The Scranton Times-Tribune, where he served as an investigative reporter and covered a wide range of political stories. His work has been recognized with numerous national and state journalism awards from the Inland Press Association, Pennsylvania Associated Press Managing Editors, Society of Professional Journalists and Pennsylvania Newsmedia Association.

You can email Borys at boryskrawczeniuk@wvia.org