On the first official day of the general election campaign, Wednesday, Gov. Josh Shapiro made a stop in Luzerne County to boost Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti’s bid for Congress.
The governor, a fellow Democrat seeking re-election himself, spent his whole time inside the Avenue Restaurant in Wyoming talking up only Cognetti, far less well known in the county than he is.
Shapiro called Cognetti “a thoroughly decent human being, a person with integrity, a person who has led Scranton forward ... and a person who I want you to know just gives a damn about this community.”
He mentioned Cognetti’s 2019 campaign for mayor that first raised the slogan, Paige Against the Machine, that she regularly repeats now.
“Do we want someone who's going to go fight to make sure we've got real accountability in this country, to stop the chaos and the cruelty and the corruption? Or do we just want another rubber stamp for the guy in charge down there?” Shapiro asked. “She is unbought, and she is unafraid, and she is someone who will go to Washington, D.C., always looking out for you.”
How they reached Wyoming
Cognetti, unopposed for the 8th Congressional District Democratic nomination, officially won the nomination in the primary election Tuesday as her opponent, U.S. Rep. Rob Bresnahan, won the Republican nomination, also unopposed.
Shapiro won the Democratic nomination for governor Tuesday as state Treasurer Stacy Garrity won the Republican. Both were also unopposed.
Shapiro's political strength
A strong votegetter in Scranton, Cognetti has never run outside the city, but Shapiro has statewide experience at wooing voters everywhere.
He's also one of the few Democratic state office holders since President Donald Trump won his first election in 2016 to consistently do well in Luzerne. He lost the county — then still strongly Democratic by voter registration — by less than a percentage point in his 2016 run for state attorney general. In 2020, he narrowly won Luzerne as he won re-election. In 2022, he defeated state Sen. Doug Mastriano, a close Trump ally, in Luzerne by about a percentage point on the way to easily winning the governor’s office. In 2024, the county flipped Republican by voter registration.
Shapiro’s endorsement helped drive Jim Haddock’s 2022 victory for state representative in a Luzerne House district. On Tuesday, three Democrats the governor endorsed in competitive congressional races elsewhere all won.
Cognetti blasts Bresnahan
After the governor finished, Cognetti took aim at Bresnahan herself. She again highlighted Bresnahan’s push to ban congressional stock trading as he ran for office and his prolific stock trading after he was elected. She also highlighted his vote last year for the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which analysts say will cut Medicaid by hundreds of millions of dollars starting next year.
“Rob Bresnahan has accelerated our pain in a way that is unfathomable,” she said. “Rob Bresnahan is in Congress to make money for himself. He is not there for us.”
Bresnahan blasts back
Before Shapiro arrived, protesters outside carried signs criticzing Cognetti, including one that said, "Paige is for the Machine." The Bresnahan campaign also issued a statement that scoffed at claims of Cognetti as a corruption fighter.
“How can Cognetti claim to be an outsider as she embraces one of Pennsylvania's highest profile Democrat insiders, allowing him to bolster her candidacy?” the statement asked. “If Cognetti is so anti-establishment, will she reject the support of the Democrat party leaders and their allies in one of the most competitive races in the country?”
The staged restaurant event — attended by staunch, invited Democratic loyalists and labeled "super-secret" by the Bresnahan campaign — marked Cognetti’s second major formal public event in Luzerne in the last two months. End Citizens United, which aims to reform federal campaign finance law, hosted her and U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona at a town hall April 18 at Luzerne County Community College.
Like Shapiro, Kelly is seen as a potential 2028 Democratic presidential candidate.
The Bresnahan-Cognetti race is expected to be one of the hottest and most expensive in the country as Democrats and Republicans tussle over control of the U.S. House.
