Rep. Susan Wild first came to my attention through this photo on the day of the heinous 1/6 insurrection. She’s clearly fearing for her life while a fellow lawmaker attempts to comfort her. There are images that better capture the terror that Congress faced that day, but few were as raw to me as this one.
She later was able to communicate with CBS News during the later hours of the insurrection about the events of the day. I wonder how she feels about the day now that she faces an election denier, State Rep. Ryan Mackenzie.
In order to get to Congress, Rep. Susan Wild had to weather some robust challenges in a swing district. She’s been a political survivor ever since first running for Congress in 2018. The question is whether or not she can survive again to continue in Congress after the 2024 election.
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Susan Wild for Pennsylvania-7
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What’s the Big Idea?
THIS DISTRICT IS A TOSSUP, with an R+2 PVI
The Lehigh Valley is on the eastern fringe of the Rust Belt, which has influenced its politics for a while now. The district has a history of narrowly supporting Democratic candidates for President and more moderate Republican members of Congress in recent times. Rep. Charlie Dent epitomized the more moderate nature of the Republicans found in the area. It did help that the Pennsylvania GOP kept gerrymandering the area to ensure they kept control of it every ten years!
All of this changed in 2018, when the Pennsylvania Supreme Court struck down the districts as an unconstitutional gerrymander. Fair maps were drawn after that, which consolidated the Lehigh Valley and made it much more amenable to supporting Democrats. Rep. Susan Wild took advantage of Dent resigning and narrowly won the special election during the 2018 blue wave. She held on in 2020 even while Biden was winning the district by a narrow 49.7% to 49.1%, running ahead of the President. Wild was thought to be an obvious target in 2022, but she defied expectations and won again 51%-49% for her third narrow win in a row.
Her chances in 2024 all depend upon who wins the district (and likely the state). If Trump wins here, Wild is in serious trouble. If Biden manages to win again, Wild is by no means safe but she has a better chance of holding the line and surviving once again.
Here’s where this race will be won in the 7th district.
- Allentown, Bethlehem, Easton: These three cities are the core of the Democratic vote in the district, and are the core cities of the Lehigh Valley. It is critical that Rep. Susan Wild turn over every stone and find every available vote from these anchors of the district to offset areas that have become less likely to vote for her.
- Lehigh Valley suburbs: The suburbs and townships surrounding the three core cities above are very important for Wild. They voted for Trump in 2016 and Biden in 2020. Which way they decide to lean for the 2024 election will determine whether or not Wild will remain in Congress.
Here’s where we need to keep the margins down, or we lose.
- Rural Lehigh Valley: The northern portion of both Lehigh and Northampton counties has turned against us, going from a swing area in the Obama era to turf that supported Trump in both of his runs. Wild will have to limit her losses as much as she can here.
- Carbon County: This county is coal country, as the name of the county suggests. It used to be a Democratic stronghold back when mining unions held sway, but just like coal-producing areas elsewhere, it has shifted into very unforgiving turf for Democratic candidates. Wild is best off not counting upon this county and concentrating efforts on the three big cities in the district.
Who is Rep. Susan Wild?
Rep. Susan Wild was born on an Air Force base in Germany and moved around with her military family quite frequently during her youth. She volunteered for the Jimmy Carter campaign in 1976 and graduated from American University two years later. Wild earned her law degree from George Washington University in 1982 and then went into private practice. She didn’t run for office until 2013, losing a race for the Lehigh County Commission. Wild was appointed solicitor of Allentown in 2015, which proved a launchpad for her Congressional career three years later.
Wild has quite the detailed issues page on her campaign website, and backs that up with her work in Congress on her House website.
- Abortion Rights Ally. Wild will support the rights of women when it comes to making their own health decisions. Wild is a vote to codify Roe, protect access to birth control and contraception, and keep IVF legal. She recently sounded the alarm about what the national GOP would do to IVF protections and abortion rights in states that still have them.
- Housing Affordability. Wild is one of the first I’ve seen focus on the issue of the high cost of housing in America and actually propose viable solutions. She would earmark remaining American Rescue Plan funds for housing, work on urban blight, encourage more training for the building trades, and provide assistance to homebuyers.
- Health Care Helper. Wild has made health care a priority while in Congress. She led the fight to change the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement to make sure US consumers weren’t trapped with higher prices. She claims her proudest vote was for the Inflation Reduction Act, which allowed Medicare to negotiate drug prices. She is now working on tackling the opioid crisis and the mental health crisis with legislation such as the Older Americans Act.
- Education Advocate. Wild wants to ensure that public schools get adequate funding through measures such as the American Rescue Plan. That funding is ending, and many school districts are facing a funding cliff. Wild also wants to modernize American schools through measures such as the Rebuilding America’s Schools Act. She has introduced legislation intended to help jumpstart participation in Head Start and in higher education as well.
- Criminal Justice Reform. Wild has consistently made criminal justice reform an issue at the forefront of her legislative efforts. Her Safe Interactions Act would require training for police on mental health calls — amongst the most dangerous to respond to. She has voted for the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, and would work to rehabilitate formerly incarcerated people into the productive workforce with the FIRST STEP Act.
- Defending Democracy. Wild is the Ranking Member of the House Ethics Committee and has taken her job very seriously, leading the charge to expel “George Santos”. To improve ethics, she has proposed the Lobbyist Loophole Closure Act. She has also voted for and co-sponsored the For the People Act and the John Lewis VRA. She has been outspoken about granting formerly incarcerated people the right to vote as felon disenfranchisement is rife, especially in the Deep South.
- Senior Citizen Supporter. As mentioned before, Wild has worked to combat the isolation of seniors through the Older Americans Act. She is steadfastly opposed to any cuts in either Social Security or Medicare and supports the Social Security 2100 Act to strengthen it. Wild also has pushed for and won increased funding for the Meals on Wheels program through the CARES Act. She is working on improving the nursing home experience for seniors right now.
- Labor Leader. Wild is supportive of the PRO Act, which would make it easier to organize a union. She is also huge on supporting apprenticeship, training, and certification programs that fuel the building trades and support their unions. That is also why she supported the CHIPS and Science Act and voted YEA on its passage.
- Gun Safety Champion. Wild has consistently voted for gun safety legislation while in Congress. That includes an assault weapons ban in 2022, which could’ve been a politically risky vote. Curiously, Wild does not mention gun safety anywhere on her issues pages and not even on the section detailing public safety measures she would support.
Who is Ryan Mackenzie?
State Rep. Ryan Mackenzie was born in Allentown. He went to New York University after graduating high school in 2000, majoring in finance and international business. He went on to earn an MBA from Harvard in 2010. Once he returned to the Lehigh Valley, he almost immediately went into politics, a career in which his mother would follow. He won a seat in the Pennsylvania State House on the first try in 2012, and has represented turf in the Lehigh Valley since. He briefly ran for this district in 2018 and 2022 as well but decided to run for his state house seat instead.
Mackenzie actually has an issues page on his website, which of course ignores some key issues. The DCCC opposition file was once again very helpful, as was Ballotpedia.
- Forced Birth Maniac. Ryan Mackenzie can run, but he cannot hide from a hideous record on abortion. He still brags about a “100% pro-life record” even for this campaign. He has voted for an abortion ban with no exceptions, as well as for an amendment to the Pennsylvania Constitution that would block any rights to an abortion without exception. Finally, he peddles the lie that Democrats “have a culture of celebrating abortion… until the moment of birth.”
- Immigration Hardliner. Mackenzie has made fear-mongering about immigrants the centerpiece of his campaign. He pushes for use of e-Verify in all hiring decisions, which would be disastrous for certain sectors of the economy. He would finish building the wall, and is a supporter of deporting ALL undocumented immigrants. He rails against “anchor babies” and pushes for a “merit-based” immigration system with rewards for those that demonstrate “speaking English”.
- Election Denier. Mackenzie has downplayed his actions after the 2020 election, likening it to “throwing a challenge flag”. He certainly was serious when he signed onto the Texas v. Pennsylvania lawsuit seeking to invalidate Pennsylvania’s Electoral College votes. He also was serious when he signed onto a letter asking Congress to reject Pennsylvania’s votes. As recently as 2022, Mackenzie bragged about doing these actions, but now he’s trying to change his tune.
- 2nd Amendment Zealot. Mackenzie is a true zealot when it comes to the 2nd amendment, writing that it is meant to “protect Americans from a tyrannical government”. He voted to allow the NRA to sue local governments that have even modest gun safety measures. He voted against background checks, as well as voting to allow individuals to carry firearms without a permit. He blames “drugs and gangs” and “far-left DAs refusing to prosecute” instead of loose gun laws for the failure of gun safety legislation.
- Debt and Deficit Peacock. Mackenzie is a fan of a concept I hadn't heard of before called “zero-based budgeting”. Basically, it is the Rick Scott plan to sunset all legislation on steroids as it calls for this budgeting to happen YEARLY. But don’t worry, Social Security and Medicare “won’t be touched!” This includes a balanced budget amendment and “reducing wasteful spending.”
- Tax Cut Terror. If the above wasn’t constraining enough on the budget, Mackenzie also calls for tax cuts saying that “holding the line isn’t enough”. He has signed the Americans for Tax Reform pledge which rules out any tax increases for any reason. He’s proud to “never have voted for a tax increase” while in the state legislature.
- Anti-Labor. Mackenzie is abhorrent on workers’ rights in a district that is on the fringes of the Rust Belt. He has voted against an increase in the Pennsylvania minimum wage. He also voted against the right for workers to organize and collectively bargain their rights. Finally, Mackenzie voted to withhold unemployment from striking workers. Oh, and his record on voting for job creation is terrible, too!
- “Woke Warrior''. Mackenzie believes the nonsense that “CRT” and other “inappropriate subjects” are being taught in schools and that [conservative] parents should have a right to stop it. He also rails against “ESG mandates” that make corporations woke and that the government is “being weaponized” against political opponents. More dangerously, he promises that tax dollars should go only to “organizations and nonprofits that share our American values.”
- Big Oil’s Best Friend. Mackenzie would support the fossil fuel industry by eliminating all regulations on it. Furthermore, he calls for energy independence but also opposes the “radical climate agenda”. Thus, more oil exploration, extraction, and production even though it is at a record in this nation already.
How Can You Help?
Pennsylvania is quite possibly the tipping point state in who decides the Electoral College, and the Lehigh Valley closely aligned with the Presidential vote in 2020. There is no doubt that Rep. Susan Wild sits in an area that is critical to winning the state. That means we should all seek to help her, whether it is through donations, volunteering, or boosting her on social media.
Rep. Susan Wild had a gangbusters fundraising quarter early this year. She lapped the GOP field numerous times over, raising a total of $1.36M for Q1. That puts her well in front of Ryan Mackenzie, who only raised a pitiful $68k during the same time period. Wild also is sitting on $2.66M in cash reserves, while Mackenzie has a lot of catching up to do — only having $117k in the bank. It is likely that dark money and the national Republican Party will prop him up as this district is too evenly divided for the GOP to triage.
What will likely be more important to her success at this time is to volunteer for her campaign. The Lehigh Valley is likely to be heavily covered by both the Biden and Casey campaigns, and Wild can easily rely on their efforts to help her campaign as well. If you live in the Lehigh Valley, know that your volunteering may make a difference locally, statewide, and possibly even nationwide!
If donating or volunteering aren’t your fortes, then there is the much easier task of promoting Rep. Susan Wild on social media. With Facebook and Twitter to cover, there is a need to promote her message all across the internet. It allows her to define Ryan Mackenzie as the extremist he is before he gets the chance to reinvent himself.
Rep. Susan Wild has 19.9k followers on her official Twitter account, and 11k followers on her official Facebook account. It’s a great way for her to highlight what she has accomplished in Congress. Just don’t read the comments (especially on Facebook) which are full of right-wing trolls for some reason. Here, she shares that she is a founding member of the Congressional Dog Lovers Caucus!
Wild also has accounts that help her with her campaigning. She has around 11.6k followers on her campaign Twitter account, and 8.5k followers on her campaign Facebook account. It is clear that she doesn’t use these accounts as often as her official accounts because her last posts were on April 23 right after the primary election was decided. It looks like her campaign is having fun below!
Help spread the word today by following Rep. Susan Wild and boosting her campaign in the critical realm of social media.
Wild is always fighting to stay in Congress during her re-election campaigns, and it is clear that she is a political survivor on swingy turf that is evenly divided between the parties. She is in the 10th most vulnerable Democratic seat according to Daily Kos Elections, which demonstrates what a precarious position she finds herself in.
I tie in the 1/6 insurrection at the beginning because Wild has yet to face an election denier like Ryan Mackenzie. I didn’t know much about him before I started to dig, but it is clear that he is a piece of work. The sad thing is that this district could still very easily elect someone like him even in 2024. Only hard work and donations will save Rep. Susan Wild and Pennsylvania’s 7th district.
The question is whether or not Rep. Susan Wild can survive a fourth close election in 2024.
Susan Wild for Pennsylvania-7
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