Six-term Democratic Rep. Matt Cartwright, who repeatedly won reelection in a district Donald Trump won three times, lost reelection to GOP businessman Rob Bresnahan on Tuesday.
Matt Cartwright was the consummate political survivor. Cartwright came to Congress by defeating a Democratic incumbent and kept winning reelection to his Scranton-area House seat even as the district evolved from a seat Obama carried twice to one Trump won in all three of his races.
That all came to an end on Tuesday. Republican businessman Rob Bresnahan defeated Cartwright, the only member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus to win reelection in a district Trump won in 2020, by a 51% to 49% margin.
With more than 7,000 votes separating him from Bresnahan, Cartwright saw the writing on the wall and conceded defeat on Election Day.
Bresnahan, a local business owner, was able to successfully link Cartwright to Biden-era inflation and the administration’s immigration policies. Without President “Scranton Joe” Biden on the ticket to boost Democratic turnout in the president’s hometown, Cartwright proved unable to outrun the Republican wave in Northeast Pennsylvania.
“I wanna say to the voters who did vote for me, whether they did vote for me or not, I’m here to represent Northeastern Pennsylvania,” Bresnahan told WNEP after his victory. “I wanna make life affordable,” the congressman-elect added. “Again, I want to secure our borders and I wanna make sure that our communities are safe because that’s the paramount to a functioning society.”
Pennsylvania’s 8th Congressional District is centered around the Scranton-Wilkes Barre metropolitan area and nearby rural counties. Cartwright won Lackawanna County (Scranton) by 12%, and Monroe County, a fast-growing exurb of New York City, by 8%.
Cartwright’s performance in Lackawanna and Monroe was not sufficient to counter Bresnahan’s 9% margin of victory in Luzerne County (Wilkes-Barre) and massive leads of 20% and 32% in rural Pike and Wayne Counties, respectively.
