The 2018 blue wave introduced US Republican Susan Wild to Congress as voters expressed their dissatisfaction with the first Trump administration. At the end of this year, after three terms, this tide, which is already ebbing, removes Wild from office.
In addition to President-elect Donald Trump’s second term, the GOP ousted U.S. Sen. Bob Casey after 18 years and flipped two Pennsylvania House seats, including Wild’s in the 7th Congressional District.
Wild told the Capital-Star that she tried to keep her campaign focused on her voters as she faced Republican state Rep. Ryan Mackenzie, who has aligned himself with Trump and GOP positions on inflation, immigration and abortion.
And while Wild was one of the first Democrats in July to express concerns “about the possibility of President Biden being picked on the priority list,” she said in an interview earlier this month that she would “stay away from it” while unpacking, where her party and her party’s own re-election campaign failed.
“What really went wrong,” Wild said, “was that the party as a whole spent too much time on issues that had no impact on people’s daily lives.”
The Wilda breed was one of the 10 upcoming congressional races according to the nonpartisan election analysis site Inside Elections. Despite Mackenzie’s 5-1 lead, the Wild lost by just over 4,000 votes.
The race was also one of the most pricey in the series. Wild raised $8.8 million and Mackenzie raised $1.7 million. But outside groups spent more than $27 million to influence the race, including nearly $10 million to oppose Wild with a super PAC from the Congressional Leadership Fund, according to OpenSecrets.org.
“At some point you think, well, the other guy raised a fraction of what I raised. And it doesn’t really look like fundraising is our problem,” Wild said, noting that super PAC spending during the race dwarfed both candidates’ fundraising. “I don’t look back and say, ‘Oh man, I wish we had spent more time on duty. I would win.”
Susan Wild won four times more than Republican challenger Ryan Mackenzie in the third quarter
Mackenzie was simply lucky to be on the same ballot as Trump, Wild said, noting that she outperformed both Casey and Vice President Kamala Harris in all three counties of the 7th District.
“I had the advantage of a lot of people who didn’t vote for Bob Casey or Kamala Harris but voted for me,” Wild said. “The GOP registered a whole bunch of modern newborn voters, MAGA voters, and they showed up and enough of them voted for the next line down… that hurt me. I don’t mean to be rude, but I can’t identify any secret sauce other than happiness.
Muhlenberg College pollster Chris Borick said the biggest factors in Wild’s loss were the political-economic cycle that created confusion for all Pennsylvania Democrats and the redrawing of her district after the 2020 census to include parts of deep-red Carbon County.
“Her path to re-election has become much more difficult. And you saw that in 2022,” Borick said, noting that the Wild won by smaller margins this year than in their first two campaigns.
After four campaigns, Wild says running for office is the most frustrating part of public service – not because of attack ads or gerrymandered districts, but because it interferes with legislative work.
“Americans don’t get what they deserve from their legislators when 10 months of every other year becomes campaign season,” she said.
While dissatisfied with the deep divisions in Congress, not only between Democrats and Republicans but also within the GOP itself, Wild said she did not let it stop her from finding a path to passing the legislation.
“After January 6, many of my colleagues talked about … a list of people they absolutely would not want to work with,” Wild said, referring to the attempted insurrection after President Joe Biden’s election. Wild was the subject of one of the most enduring images of the US Capitol takeover as she lay on the floor of the House chamber, clearly scared.
“If you really want to get things done in Washington, you have to find an issue that you really care about and then find someone on the other side of the aisle who cares about it as much as you do. You can’t exclude people for any reason,” Wild said.
Looking ahead to the next two years and beyond, Wild said she plans to continue advocating for the Lehigh Valley, which she has called home since the 1980s, and would not rule out another attempt to regain the 7th District seat.
“I love being in this House. I love representing a district that you can really get to know…every corner of it,” Wild said, adding that the Senate and other statewide offices do not interest her. “Anyone running for statewide office in Pennsylvania has to visit 67 counties, and there is no way to get to know them all that well.”
Wild said she is proud of what she has achieved in her campaign to reduce drug prices and improve access to infertility treatment. The work performed in her district office brought the greatest satisfaction.
“I could be out shopping and a random stranger would come up to me and tell me his experience with… waiting years in some cases for a problem with Social Security or the IRS and so on to be resolved at my district office. I greased the wheels and it worked,” Wild said. “That really makes me proud and I think that’s probably what we’ll be most remembered for.”
During the campaign, however, Wild most often talked about her work to support Americans struggling with the costs of insulin and other prescription drugs. Language that caps prescription costs for people on Medicare, including capping the cost of insulin at $35 per month, was passed as part of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.
“I felt like I went to Congress in 2018 with almost a mandate to work on this issue, which was my number one priority,” Wild said. “Honestly… it wasn’t the most important thing to me when I started running.”
When she knocked on doors and met voters, she found that the price of prescription drugs, especially insulin, was the No. 1 thing Wild had heard about.
“In terms of whether people really feel it, I’ve had a lot of positive feedback from people who feel like they’ve finally been saved from their drug company,” Wild said.
Among the projects she has completed for the district, the most frequently topped is a $5.6 million project to expand the terminal at Lehigh Valley International Airport to provide the Transportation Security Agency with more space to screen passengers.
“It was one of the first things I heard about when I became a member of Congress,” Wild said. It was the first project in the country completed with funding from the bipartisan $5 billion infrastructure bill passed in 2022.
“I think as a party we have become so focused on the reproductive rights message that we have neglected other issues that would appeal more to these communities.”
But Wild noted that she has secured funding for more modest projects, such as a food pantry in Carbon County and a modern location for Neighborhood Bike Works, a nonprofit that teaches youth how to build and maintain their own bicycles.
“It wasn’t just big things like airport terminals,” Wild said.
US Supreme Court judgment of 2022 Dobbs the ruling established one of the dominant issues for Democrats in this year’s election as Trump and other conservative federal candidates discussed the prospect of a national abortion ban. While Wild’s campaign highlighted Mackenzie’s votes on anti-abortion measures in the House of Representatives, it was not the main issue of her campaign.
This month, Wild told the Capital-Star that she has tried to keep her campaigns focused on her voters, manufacturing and jobs while facing Republican opponents aligned with Trump and GOP positions on the economy, immigration and abortion. Wild stated that she felt the Democratic Party spent too much time on issues that had no impact on people’s daily lives.
“Sometimes we focus on things that aren’t necessarily that important to them, like simple things like: Do my kids go to a good school? Am I in a safe neighborhood and can I pay my rent?” Wild said, adding that the Democratic Party often gets stuck on one message. “I think as a party we have become so focused on the reproductive rights message that we have neglected other issues that would appeal more to these communities.”
“We need to diversify our message, but I also think we need to listen and pay attention to some of the bright, younger leaders in our party and stop doing things in an old-school way,” Wild said. “We have to reinvent the way we campaign.”
The Republican Party, on the other hand, relied on a devoted base it had built over decades of investment in cable news, using podcasts and “deep, dark social media that I don’t even know the names of,” Wild said. She cited reports that Trump’s 18-year-aged son, Barron, was influential in his campaign “because he was listening to, watching, whatever young men his age were watching, and someone smart in the campaign realized that it was worth listening to.”
The GOP also sought to reach newborn people of color, especially Latinos, who make up the majority of the population of Allentown, the most populous community in the 7th District. Wild stated that she did not lose because of the Latino vote or newborn men of color voting for Trump. While such voting patterns are harder to track, Wild said she performed significantly better than Democrats at the top of the ticket.
“There is a reason for this. I showed up, and I don’t mean the last six weeks before the election. “I mean, throughout my time in Congress, I’ve been in these communities, going to places, meeting these people,” Wild said.
And while Wild admits it’s easier to do this as a congressional candidate than as a presidential candidate, reconnecting with minority communities and the working class will be imperative to the future of the Democratic Party.
“People often ask me, how do we get back to rural America?” – said Wild. “And there’s a really simple answer to that. You literally show up in rural America… you meet people, you go to town meetings and you hear what they care about.”
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