Democrat Bob Brooks unseats Ryan Mackenzie in the Lehigh Valley, reclaiming a House seat Trump helped flip in 2024
The former firefighter and union leader won the seat back two years after it went Republican in a Trump-led wave.
Democrat Bob Brooks defeated freshman Republican U.S. Rep. Ryan Mackenzie on Tuesday in a Lehigh Valley-based swing seat that his party saw as one of its best opportunities — both in Pennsylvania and across the country — to flip a district that President Donald Trump helped turn red just two years ago.
Brooks, a 53-year-old union leader and retired Bethlehem firefighter, had mounted a vigorous campaign as an outside candidate with early support from state and national Democratic leaders, including Gov. Josh Shapiro. Both the candidate and his high-profile supporters rallied around Brooks’ working-class background, hoping it would help recapture voters who’d drifted toward Trump and ultimately help secure control of the U.S. House.
More than 200 people in Bethlehem erupted as Bob Brooks declared victory just before 10 p.m. and took the stage with his family, friends and staff.
“Well, we did it,” Brooks said, running his hands over his bald head and down his face, exhaling after both a general election and a Democratic primary earlier this year filled with attacks lobbed at him.
After a round of thank yous, Brooks offered a version of the stump speech that defined his campaign.
“D.C. is going to hear this message loud and clear when Bob Brooks gets to town,” he said. “We aren’t going down there to try and piece things back together where they were before. We’re going down to shake up the status quo, fight for working people, stop the bullshit and build something better from the ashes.”
Voters in Macungie, where Trump visited in June, said they thought Democrats would do a better job at lowering prices if given control in Washington.
“I have a good job, so I haven’t been as affected as other people have. But it’s only a matter of time before I am, and then if I can’t help myself, I can’t help others,” said Erin McDonald, 46, a healthcare worker from Macungie who voted for Brooks. “I feel very strongly about that. And I want people who care about people representing me.”
Mackenzie, 44, is a former state lawmaker who narrowly defeated a three-term Democratic incumbent in 2024, when Trump won Pennsylvania and buoyed down-ballot Republicans.
The 7th Congressional District covers three urban areas — including Allentown, the state’s third-largest city — as well as sprawling suburbs, heavily Republican rural areas and the Pocono Mountains. It includes one of the state’s key swing counties, Northampton, and a sizable Latino population in and around Allentown.
Brooks’ campaign worked to cultivate support among Latino voters who backed Trump in larger margins in 2024 — appearing with Shapiro at a community festival before the competitive May primary and appearing on a Spanish-language radio station with U.S. Rep. Chris Deluzio.
The district last flipped blue in 2018, when backlash to Trump’s first term and an unusually timed redistricting in Pennsylvania led to Republicans losing four districts they held in Pennsylvania.
Democrat Susan Wild won the Lehigh Valley seat that year by less than 800 votes. Mackenzie defeated her in 2024 by 4,000 votes out of about 403,000 cast — the seventh-smallest margin among 435 House elections in the country.
Brooks and his team — ahead by 5 percentage points in a recent Inquirer/New York Times/Siena University poll — had projected confidence of a larger win heading into Tuesday, even while playing defense as Mackenzie and his allies unleashed a flurry of attacks on the Democrat’s personal and professional life.
With Trump’s sinking approval ratings — falling to 37% in a district he won two years ago, according to the poll — Brooks sought to tie Mackenzie to the president. The Republican lawmaker voted nearly 100% with the White House’s positions and spoke at the Trump-themed midterm convention in Dallas in September.
