Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti is gambling with her political future by running for two offices at the same time, veteran political analysts say.
By announcing a run for the 8th Congressional District seat next year while still running for re-election this year, Cognetti risks losing both seats, some analysts say.
Others credit her for being transparent about her higher political aspirations.
“Usually, there’s speculation that someone's going to make a run for another office shortly after they're elected or run in the previous year, but usually they hold off the formal announcement,” said Chris Borick, a political science professor at Muhlenberg College and director of its polling institute.
“It might be generally accepted that that's (the announcement of the second race is) going to happen, but they avoid going all in on two races at once, often because it's challenging to defend the first race if people can easily point to your aspirations beyond. And so that's why it doesn't happen that much,” Borick said.
Two races in focus
Cognetti, 45 and a Democrat, seeks a new four-year term as mayor in the Nov. 4 municipal election against Republican Trish Beynon and third-party candidates Gene Barrett and Rik Little.
Only one challenger besides Cognetti, Scranton Democrat Francis McHale, has announced a candidacy for the 8th Congressional District seat, occupied by first-term Republican Rep. Rob Bresnahan, of Dallas Twp., Luzerne County. That election is Nov. 3, 2026.
Mayoral contest criticisms
Two of Cognetti’s opponents for mayor have already integrated attacks on her dual aspirations into their campaigns.
“Well, I mean, it's duplicitous at best,” said Barrett, a former Scranton councilman and the Barrett for Mayor candidate for mayor.
In a recent interview, Barrett pointed to Cognetti’s latest campaign finance report and its many contributions from across the country.
“I mean, it's all over Chicago, Boston, California, Chattanooga, Tennessee, and you just look at the report,” Barrett said. “It clearly tells you, for the last three years, what she's been doing. Okay, she's been in Washington, strategically setting up herself with connections all across the country.”
That’s not so unusual for Cognetti. In both her previous runs for mayor, Cognetti, an Oregon native, has piled up large amounts of campaign cash from donors nationwide, many of them family and friends she made in past campaigns and federal jobs.
Cognetti’s simultaneous bids are “just unheard of,” Barrett said.
“How can you tell the people, the voters of Scranton in particular, what you're going to do for them over the next four years, when, in fact, you're also telling them at the same time, I may not be here for the next four years?” Barrett said. “It's upside down.”
Accounting executive Trish Beynon, the Republican mayoral candidate, said Cognetti has raised “questions about her leadership and her priorities” in the minds of voters.
“When you think about it, Scranton deserves a mayor that's committed to the city and who's focused on its residents and the neighborhood and probably even the local businesses,” Beynon said. “And we need a mayor that can give their full attention to all the issues at hand. I mean, there's blight, there's the road conditions, there's so many problems, and I feel that if she's running for two offices, she's not going to give 100% of her attention to the city of Scranton taxpayers.”
Cognetti responds
In a late August interview with WVIA News four days before she announced, Cognetti said she has no trouble juggling multiple tasks. City voters should back her in November because “we’ve been doing a great job,” she said.
“We have an incredible team. We have the best team that I could ever hope for in the city. We have so many projects coming online,” Cognetti said. “We have a budget that we are always managing very, very carefully. We have a new capital budget that's really exciting. There's so many great, nerdy things that are going on behind the scenes that I'm still excited to continue.”
Cognetti said, “it’s not abnormal for somebody in office to see a need to fill a gap in another office.”
“It was not my plan, but from what I'm seeing in D.C., I just feel it's a time to try,” she said.
In an emailed statement, Wendy Wilson, the spokesperson for Cognetti’s campaigns, called Barrett “a career politician” who pushed the city into distressed status that Cognetti ended and hurt the city as a councilman and in other jobs.
Wilson said Beynon must answer how she’ll avoid a conflict of interest as mayor because she’s the fiancé of a construction company owner who bids on city projects and whose “numerous lawsuits involving multiple municipalities” cost taxpayers money.
Dual election history
Candidates have often run for two offices at the same time in the same year, mostly on the municipal level. For example, school board candidates run for a four-year term while hedging their bets and running for a vacant two-year term.
In other instances, rumors circulate about candidates seeking higher office while they campaign for reelection to their current offices.
Pennsylvania has two current prime examples. State Treasurer Stacy Garrity, a Republican, was seen as a potential governor candidate as she ran for reelection last year, but only announced for governor recently. Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, faces reelection next year, but he’s done little to discourage speculation he will run for president in 2028.
This 'twofer' different
However, each is an example of announcing a campaign for higher office after reelection.
Simultaneous campaigns for different offices in different years represents “the height of arrogance,” Republican political and public affairs consultant Chris Nicholas said.
“Before she made the announcement, she said she 'owed it to the people of Northeast Pennsylvania to take a serious look at running for Congress,'” Nicholas said.
“I mean, who thinks like that," Nicholas added, suggesting that Cognetti's actions suggest her top priority once she get reelected to mayor "is to go run for a federal office that will take you farther away from Scranton.”
Nicholas said he doesn’t understand why Cognetti couldn’t wait until after the mayor election ended to announce a run for Congress.
Perhaps, he said, Cognetti felt pressure to announce early to discourage others considering bids for Congress.
“Now, she's caused herself issues in two races,” he said.
Even if she wins for mayor, she risks damaging her political standing, he said. A weak showing in the mayor’s race could make her look weak politically.
“You open yourself (up) to ‘Well, you're on the decline,’” Nicholas said.
Cognetti's electoral history
Cognetti received 36% of the vote against six other candidates in her first run in 2019, beating the closest contender by more than 14 percentage points.
Since then, in three elections — two primary and one municipal — Cognetti has never received less than 71.3% of the vote.
Barrett, who twice won his council seat in the 1990s, finished last in a Democratic primary in his last bid for mayor in 2001. Little and Beynon have not run before this year.
Cognetti is also the Democratic nominee in a city still that's more than 2 to 1 Democratic.
“So, the consideration might be, ‘OK, this (running for Congress) is going to be hard,” Borick said. “I'm an incumbent mayor in a city that votes overwhelmingly, or at least strongly Democratic that this seems to be fairly safe for me. So, why not get on the ground early, get your congressional campaign fully established, and hit the ground running. I guess that's her calculus.”
Losing for mayor would tag Cognetti “with a very embarrassing loss” that Bresnahan would certainly highlight, he said.
“I don't know if it would be completely devastating to her chances, but it certainly would be a real hard hurdle to get over,” Borick said.
Not so fast, she's doing the job
Democratic political consultant J.J. Abbott, who considers Cognetti “a rising star” in state politics, isn’t so sure she’s taking a risk running for two offices simultaneously.
Abbott said he doubts a weak showing by Cognetti in November will matter next year.
“I think these congressional races are really going to come down to the environment that's going to exist in November of 2026,” he said. “Either way, she's going to have to get out there, tell people her story, talk about what she wants to do. And I think her track record is that she's going to work incredibly hard to do that, while also managing the job of being mayor.”
Abbott said Cognetti deserves credit for being upfront with voters about her ambitions instead of hiding her future intentions as many politicians do.
“A lot of politicians, I think would wait until the election, their reelection was over, and then they would announce but I think she's being direct to people that she sees what's happening in Washington,” Abbott said. “I think it is more honest to be open and transparent with voters about her sense of wanting to serve in a bigger way in the future.”
The criticism of her dual campaigns sounds like “trying to find a way to criticize her when it's hard to criticize her because she's done such a good job as the mayor,” he said.
“I generally think voters understand that people in politics are ... often looking for a place they can serve ... in a bigger role,” Abbott said. “No one can really knock her for not being transparent. She's being fully transparent. I think it's consistent with her reputation as someone who doesn't do things the status quo way when it comes to politics.”
EDITOR'S NOTE: Wendy Wilson, the spokesperson for Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti’s campaigns, is the wife of Ben Payavis II, chief content officer and executive producer at WVIA Public Media.
