Although a top House recruit for Democrats in Pennsylvania is running as a working class champion, a Washington Reporter investigation casts doubt on that categorization — and local and national Republicans are eager to drive a wedge between that image and what they view as the reality of her finances.
A review of Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti’s financial disclosures show that Scranton’s mayor has little in common with working class families in Pennsylvania’s 8th District.
Cognetti’s financial disclosure shows that her net worth is between $533,000 and $2.3 million, even though her salary as mayor is $75,000. Cognetti is nevertheless running as “Paige Against the Machine” in a district where the median household income is just over $65,000.
Democrats have spent months attacking Rep. Rob Bresnahan (R., Pa.) for his net worth. Peter Brath, Bresnahan’s campaign manager, told the Reporter that “Mayor Cognetti is a poll-constructed fraud, and her house of cards is going to collapse far sooner than she thinks.” On the campaign trail, Bresnahan’s allies frequently refer to Cognetti as the “Millionaire Mayor,” sources on the ground told the Reporter.
“Political opportunist Paige Cognetti is a shameless hypocrite who is nothing like hardworking Northeast Pennsylvanians,” Reilly Richardson, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), told the Reporter. “Voters won’t be fooled by Cognetti’s lies.”
In 2024, Bresnahan ousted Rep. Matt Cartwright (D., Pa.). Cartwright, like Cognetti, leaned into a working class persona that Bresnahan and other Republicans argued was false. This cycle, Republicans are eager to go on the offense about cost of living issues in Scranton, laying much of the blame for the city’s skyrocketing cost of living on the mayor.
“Political opportunist Paige Cognetti has made life in Scranton more expensive and less safe,” Richardson said. “Voters know Cognetti costs too much for Pennsylvania.”
A Cognetti campaign spokesperson told the Reporter that “Paige gets around in a 2019 Ford Edge that she shares with her mother, not a private helicopter. She and her husband own a local small business and she’s still paying off her student loan. They are proudly raising their two young kids in Scranton, and their family looks a lot like others all across NEPA. It’s unfortunate that Congressman Rob Bresnahan, who inherited a net worth of as much as $70 million, is trying to distract from the fact he is profiting off of stock trades as a member of Congress despite campaigning on a congressional stock trading ban.”
