An anti-corruption agenda that bans congressional stock trading and limits how long a person can serve in Congress tops Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti’s to-do list as she prepares to serve in the U.S. House.
“People want real reform. They want to see change in Washington. And I know from experience that you can't get anything done if corruption's in the way,” the congresswoman-elect said in a post-election interview Thursday. “It's very clear that people understand that our economy is rigged, that the corruption in D.C. is really taking over and standing in the way of us meaningfully lowering costs. And that work has to happen in parallel, though, to ending the war in Iran, (and) to ending the tariffs that are just so erratic and hurting businesses and consumers.”
Cognetti, a Democrat, regularly featured Republican U.S. Rep. Rob Bresnahan’s frequent stock trading as a congressman in campaign ads. Her proposed anti-corruption measures formed a linchpin of her election campaign.
She favors banning congressional stock trading; government audits; forbidding paying members of Congress with no budget in place; banning corporate political action committee contributions; banning members from lobbying after they leave Congress and serving on corporate boards while in Congress; forbidding congressional prediction market gambling on war, elections and government activity; and 18-year term limits.
Cognetti, 46, pledged to leave Congress after serving 18 years if elected to serve that long.
“I don't need any one job for more than 18 years. I think it's hard to argue that anyone needs any job for two decades,” she said. “And when I talk to people about our reform agenda, term limits are the thing that people really start clapping for.”
On healthcare reform
Cognetti said Congress must also reform the nation’s healthcare system, starting by quickly repealing Medicaid cuts expected to occur Jan. 1 because of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed in July 2025. U.S. Rep. Rob Bresnahan’s vote for that bill turned into a major issue that Cognetti exploited in their campaign.
“We have a (healthcare) system that isn't working for so many people, but we can't get to those reforms with corruption in the way, and with a trillion dollars cut from Medicaid,” she said. “We can't reform the healthcare system if millions of Americans are kicked off the insurance rolls.”
Cognetti said the bill already cost an estimated 9,000 8th Congressional District residents their health insurance this year.
“About 20,000 more, we think ... would lose it in 2027, 2028 if these Medicaid cuts go through,” she said. “We can't be jeopardizing our rural hospitals even more than they were already in jeopardy. So, we've got to put that floor back under Medicaid.”
Getting things done
Seated in her campaign headquarters in downtown Scranton, Cognetti spoke in front of a wall plastered with Paige Against the Machine and Paige Cognetti campaign signs backdropped by Pennsylvania maps.
On an adjacent wall, a makeshift paper countdown calendar said, “00 Days Until Election Day.” It served as a welcome reminder that the bruising election campaign between Cognetti, a Democrat, and Bresnahan, a Republican first-term congressman, was over.
Actual governing always follows elections. In Congress, getting anything done means securing a majority of votes in the House and Senate and the president’s signature. In the Senate, that also often requires 60 yes votes to end filibusters that prevent a bill from coming up for a vote.
If Democrats win unresolved elections in Alaska and Mississippi, they will have 56 Senate votes.
Cognetti said she’s optimistic about securing 60 Senate votes at times because this election ranks as “a watershed moment ... in American politics.”
“I don't see it as a mandate for Democrats. I see it as a directive from the American people,” she said. “They want us to go get things done. They want us to push the corruption out. I think that it doesn't matter if you're a Democrat or Republican. If you're listening, you understand that is the message, and that is the direction from the American people.”
She points out a third of senators must run for reelection in 2028.
“They're looking at last Tuesday night,” she said. “They're looking at the way that things have shifted. They're looking at what the American people want. I think you could get to 60 on some of these things.”
When there aren’t 60 votes, she said, Democrats can still push legislation as far as possible, citing the state General Assembly as an example.
In the Pennsylvania House, where Democrats have lived with only a one-vote majority the last few years, they managed to pass priorities such as raising the minimum wage, even though the Republican-controlled Senate balked, she said.
“What the House here in Pennsylvania has done very well for these years is set at the floor of the Senate a lot of priorities and bills that could make Pennsylvanians' lives better,” she said. “They were very effective — as we took the Senate this year — in communicating that we could raise the minimum wage, but for these (Republican) state senators.”
Democrats will hold majority control of the state Senate for the first time since 1994 and expanded their state House majority. With control of the House, Senate and the governor’s office because Gov. Josh Shapiro won reelection, Cognetti pointed out, Democrats can now push through their agenda.
Even if U.S. House Democrats can’t pass all their priorities in the next two years, passing them in just the House could set the stage for Democratic candidates in the 2028 election and get to 60 members in the Senate, she said.
“So even if some of these priorities can't get through the 120th Congress, we will be able to show the American people that we are trying,” she said. “We need to communicate that. We need to make it very, very clear that we're trying, and that there are some things that would take until 2029 to get through. We need to show our work every single day.”
A sizable victory
Cognetti defeated Bresnahan by a large though still unofficial margin of 8.7 percentage points in the election Tuesday.
It was the second largest victory margin for any candidate since the 8th Congressional District was rewritten in 2018 to encompass most of Northeast Pennsylvania. Bresnahan won by 1.6 points in 2024 when he defeated Democratic Rep. Matt Cartwright. Cartwright won the seat by 9.3 points in 2018 but never by more than 3.6 points in the next three elections before losing to Bresnahan.
“To me, this was a toss-up, really a coin-flip up until 8 p.m. Tuesday,” she said. “So, I haven't gone through the numbers in detail, but I see our work paying off. We made sure that we were in every county, that we had organizers in every county, that we ... made sure that people knew I wasn't afraid to go talk to anybody.”
Choosing hard work
Cognetti, a former Scranton School director who became mayor, scoffed at suggestions she’s only stayed interested in politics to keep seeking higher office.
“I just laugh when I hear that,” she said. “I’ve always gone to the place that was on fire the most. It was the Scranton School District (and its financial troubles) in 2017. It was the city of Scranton (following a corrupt mayor and ongoing financial troubles) in 2019, and now it’s Washington, D.C., in 2026. The work of any of these positions is always hard, but I’ve chosen to go into these positions when the work is tremendously difficult.”
Cognetti said she loves being mayor.
“This (running for Congress) is not something that I was aspiring to do in any way, shape or form,” she said. “But when I saw what was happening in D.C., when I saw the disconnect between the congressman and his constituents, I felt that I should step in.”
TV campaign villain
She entered the race for Congress knowing TV commercials would frequently portray her as a villain. She discussed what to expect with her husband, Ryan, and their family.
“In northeastern Pennsylvania, if you are a person that watches television or listens to the radio every other year, you know what it's going to look like,” she said. “And our family was well aware of that. The difference (with running for Congress) is the money that comes with it, right? A mayor campaign, the level of money is not there, and so every time you're watching a Giants or Eagles game, you're not watching an ad about you.”
During their televised debate, Bresnahan noted the ads.
“I think there's one thing that we can both agree on right now is — I don't know about you, Mayor — but I am sick and tired of political ads,” Bresnahan said.
Only five more days of ads, Bresnahan told her during a post-debate handshake, she said.
Cognetti was thankful her two young daughters aren’t on social media to read the negativity posted about her there.
“I'll say that when there was an ad that ... was against me, I think because I'm a woman mostly seems to be the underlying message,” she said. “(In one ad attacking her), they had hearts and smoochy kisses emojis in the ad, and the girls (her daughters) thought that that was really cute, and they were like, ‘Oh, it's the one with mommy in the hearts.’”
Breaking the glass ceiling — again
Cognetti, elected Scranton’s first female mayor in 2019, became the first woman in Northeast Pennsylvania to win a full two-year term in Congress. Veronica Boland of Scranton won a special election in 1942 to serve out the final two months of her late husband’s term.
Before voters elected Cognetti and former TV anchor Janelle Stelson in the Dauphin County-centered 10th Congressional District this year, only a dozen women had won elections to represent Pennsylvania in Congress, all to the House.
Cognetti wore white to her first inauguration as mayor in 2020, a year that marked the 100th anniversary of women gaining the right to vote. She also wore white at her celebration rally Tuesday. Suffragists who fought for the right to vote often wore white.
“It was an extra special year (2020) for women to celebrate having, you know, finally gotten to have their voices in our democracy,” she said. “I don't think about those things often, certainly not while I'm campaigning. But when I took the stage on Tuesday night with my daughters, you know, it did flash through my mind.”
As mayor, Cognetti said, she often speaks to groups of preschool, high school or college students.
“One of the women who I talked to six or seven years ago, she now wants to pursue government service, and it's tremendously impactful for me to hear that,” Cognetti said. “So, I think it's really important that we continue to make sure our kids understand that anyone can be anything as long as they try hard and make good choices and work really hard for their neighbors.”
On Election Day, Cognetti and her husband brought their daughters with them to Tripp Elementary School to vote.
When they returned to the parking lot, their older daughter, Sloane, 6, asked a question.
“Wait, mommy, did you vote for yourself? Can you do that?” she said.
“That was so amazing,” Sloane’s mother said. “Like, she’s thinking about the rules of play and she’s got them down ... It was very cute. She came into this world two weeks before I became mayor. We are very much on this journey together as a family.”
Old friends and family surrounded her on election night, but so did new faces she’d never seen before, she said.
“And as the campaign went on, we kept drawing in more people. I kept seeing more people that I'd never seen before, and that's the mark of your message resonating,” she said. “If people that don't even know you want to come help out, they want to see the change too, and it's tremendously powerful. It's a powerful responsibility to know that people are putting their faith in you.”
The next mayor, committees, toys
On other topics, Cognetti said:
She plans to resign as mayor Jan. 3, hours before House members take the oath of office.
When that happens, the city council president will become acting mayor for up to 30 days, a period the council must use to find a replacement. If no replacement is named after 30 days, the Lackawanna County Court of Common Pleas will decide.
In an interview last week, Council President Tom Schuster was uncertain about a special election for mayor taking place next year.
Cognetti said the council should schedule a special election, perhaps as early as the May municipal primary election, to choose someone to fill out the rest of her term. The term expires in January 2030.
“We have a very recent precedent in 2019. I was there,” she said, referring to her first win for mayor in a special election. “The people of Scranton need to decide (for) themselves who the next mayor is.”
She isn’t sure what House committees she wants to join, though first-term members sometimes have little say in that.
“I'm sifting through all of that right now,” she said. “I just printed out, literally today, I got a printout of the transition guide and what to think through. I mean, when I think about the seat, I always think about (the House) Appropriations (Committee).
"Of course, you know, traditionally there have been you know strong appropriators in this region, so I think about that. It's unlikely that freshmen can get on Ways and Means or Appropriations, but it's important to think those through now and in the coming days. I'll be doing a lot of thinking on that.”Cartwright and former local congressmen Joe McDade, Daniel Flood and Don Sherwood served on the Appropriations Committee. It’s considered one of the most powerful because of its control over spending.
Cognetti said she also thinks about joining the Veterans Affairs, Small Business or Transportation and Infrastructure committees.
“You know, the veterans and small businesses are the backbone of our northeastern Pennsylvania, and then we also have transportation infrastructure as mayor,” she said. “We've done a lot of work with PennDOT. We've done a lot of infrastructure work. It's very, very important that we continue to do that throughout the entire region. And the experience, having been a local official, I think it could be tremendously impactful on that committee.”
The toys seen in her final television commercial came from her daughters’ playroom.
“My parents gave the kids that Fisher-Price cash register, the old school one, the Etch-a-Sketch,” she said. “And then Miss Kelly, basically our nanny, she bought the pink phone. The Ken doll is mine from the 1980s.”
WVIA Screenshot/Paige for PA Campaign CommercialScranton Mayor Paige Cognetti holds a toy helicopter belonging to her daughters as part of a TV commercial promoting her campaign for Congress in 2026. That toy helicopter was a subtle dig at Bresnahan, who owns a real helicopter. It also appeared in her introductory campaign video.
“That's our Bluey helicopter,” she said, referring to the popular children’s cartoon character.
Her campaign intentionally avoided hosting an array of politicians from outside Pennsylvania, despite plenty of offers. In April, she joined Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly at a campaign finance reform event in Nanticoke.
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries campaigned for other Democratic congressional candidates in Pennsylvania, but not for Cognetti.
Mostly, state elected officials, including Gov. Josh Shapiro and several members of Congress campaigned for her.
Pete Buttigieg, the former South Bend, Indiana, mayor, former U.S. Transportation secretary and likely presidential candidate, visited Scranton, but privately with no public events.
“He and I had lunch at Abe's (Deli in Scranton),” Cognetti said. “And he gave me some great advice ... about how to help your family get through this.”
From the outside, the reluctance to host famed politicians or celebrities from outside the state looks like wanting to avoid reminding people she’s an Oregon native.
Bresnahan’s campaign sometimes referred to Cognetti as “Portland Paige” and the congressman himself emphasized his local roots in a late-campaign television commercial.
Cognetti said declining celebrity campaigners had more to do with time.
“We made it clear that we needed to focus here. It can become a real distraction,” she said. “I mean, it can take a lot of staff time if you have a lot of people come in from the outside. Instead of talking to voters and understanding their needs, you're busy, you know, setting up a schedule for somebody else.”
The Bresnahan campaign also mostly avoided hosting a lot of celebrities or well-known politicians from outside the state. Notably, President Trump didn’t visit, though many expected him.
Various Trump administration cabinet secretaries and other top officials paid official visits to highlight issues or Bresnahan’s work as a congressman without getting overtly political about it or endorsing him for reelection.
House Speaker Mike Johnson made three local campaign stops — two public, one private — and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise paid a private visit for Bresnahan.
Former congressman Lou Barletta seemed like an obvious choice for a joint campaign appearance, but a Bresnahan campaign official pointed out Barletta now lives mostly in Delaware.
