In 7th, contrasts between Wild, Mackenzie define high-stakes race
In 7th, contrasts between Wild, Mackenzie define high-stakes race
In the 7th Congressional District, incumbent Democrat Susan Wild is facing Ryan Mackenzie, a Republican state lawmaker, in a matchup that embodies the high stakes of Tuesday’s election.
Wild, who is seeking a fourth term, and Mackenzie, who represents the 187th House District, have clear contrasts on the issues.
Wild said she is seeking reelection because she wants to continue to deliver for the Lehigh Valley.
“It's been an incredibly fulfilling experience to listen to and then understand the issues that constituents bring to me – whether they are individuals or companies who do business here in the district or community organizations,” Wild said.
“And I have found that it's wonderful to be able to give back to a community that has done so much for me in my adult life.”
Mackenzie said he decided to run for Congress when he learned he would become a first-time father.
“What I’ve seen from the Joe Biden administration in Washington, D.C., is scaring me and we need to get our country back on the right track,” he said earlier this year.
Mackenzie, who lives in Lower Macungie Township, said he can make a difference in Washington, D.C.
“I have a proven conservative track record in the state House of Representatives that I plan to carry forward and help us solve some of our most pressing issues,” he said.
When it comes to issues, Wild, who lives in South Whitehall Township, is pro-choice and has been a leading voice for federal legislation to legalize in vitro fertilization as a method of contraception.
In 12 years in office, Mackenzie has voted to restrict access to abortion, including limiting it to 20 weeks with no exceptions for rape, incest or fetal abnormalities. At a WFMZ-TV “Business Matters” forum in September, he said, “I've always supported the exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother.”
Both candidates agree that Israel has an absolute right to defend itself against Hamas for the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack that killed more than 1,200 Israelis and led to the capture of 250 hostages. About 100 remain captive, while the rest were released, freed by Israeli forces or died in captivity.
Mackenzie blames the Biden administration and Wild for the situation. Wild responded at a “Business Matters” forum in September that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, not Biden, makes the decisions in the war.
When it comes to the economy, Mackenzie said the Biden administration’s spending of trillions of dollars caused inflation, which reached a high of 9.1% in June 2022. Inflation has since dropped, bottoming out at 2.1% in September.
Democrats say high inflation was caused by the Ukraine War, supply-chain disruptions from the coronavirus pandemic and corporate greed.
Wild acknowledged that inflation has been a burden on American families. As for helping get the country back on track, she points to the millions of dollars in economic grants that she helped secure for the Lehigh Valley.
The 7th covers all of Northampton, Lehigh and Carbon counties and, in Monroe County, Eldred and Polk townships and about half of Ross Township.
It is considered crucial to the control of the House of Representatives where Republicans now hold 220 seats versus the Democrat’s 212. There are also three vacancies.
The battle over the 7th has been marked with millions in spending, a heavy dose of advertising and accusations that play loose with each other’s positions.
In 7th, Wild raises four times more, outspends Mackenzie by nearly ninefold
In the congressional district, Democrats with 230,331 voters as of Oct. 21 have a slight advantage over the Republicans, who count 206,152 among their ranks.
But also in the mix are 86,639 independents and 21,005 voters belonging to third parties.
The race is considered a toss-up by national political analysts. A recent Muhlenberg College/Morning Call poll bore this out. It showed Wild ahead 51% to 45% over Mackenzie, but, with the margin of error factored in, the race could go either way.
Here is a look at the candidates and where they stand on issues. Interviews, televised forums, campaign websites, government sites, advertisements, news articles and other sources were used to compile information.
BACKGROUNDS
Wild, 67, is the daughter of an Air Force officer whose career led the family to move often. She graduated from American University in 1978 and earned a law degree from George Washington University in 1982.
She was a partner in Allentown the law firm Gross McGinley. She became Allentown’s city solicitor, a part-time position, in 2015, serving for two years.
Her time as solicitor coincided with an FBI raid that led to the conviction of Allentown Mayor Ed Pawlowski for what was described as a “pay-to-play” scheme. Others in the scheme pleaded guilty or were convicted after a trial. The Morning Call reported that Wild was credited by the FBI for her help in securing city documents needed for the investigation.
Wild has two grown children.
Mackenzie is a ninth-generation resident of the Lehigh Valley. His mother Milou Mackenzie of Lower Saucon Township is the Republican state representative from the 131st District and is running for a third term. His father Charles Mackenzie is a former chair of the Lehigh County Republican Party.
Mackenzie graduated from Parkland High School in 2000 and from New York University in 2004 with a bachelor’s degree in finance and international business. He received a master of business administration degree in 2010 from Harvard University.
His background includes working for the U.S. Labor Department, the state Department of Labor and Industry and being director of the Pennsylvania Republican Victory Program.
Trump appointed him to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Local Government Advisory Committee and as a commissioner on the nonpartisan President's Commission on White House Fellowships.
Mackenzie is married and has an infant son.
FORAY INTO POLITICS
Wild ran for Lehigh County commissioner for District 2 in 2013 but lost to Republican incumbent Percy Dougherty.
In 2018, she ran for Congress when incumbent Republican Charlie Dent decided not seek an eighth term in the 15th Congressional District. Under redistricting, the Lehigh Valley became part of the 7th district in 2022.
She defeated Republican Marty Nothstein, an Olympic track-cycling gold medalist and former Lehigh County commissioner, with 55.3% of the vote.
Wild twice defeated Republican Lisa Scheller, a former chairperson of the Lehigh County Board of Commissioners and the former chairman and CEO of Silberline Manufacturing Co., by 51.9% in 2020 and 51% in 2022.
In Congress, Wild serves on the Foreign Affairs and Education and Labor committees and on the Committee on Ethics.
Mackenzie was first elected to the 134th House District in April 2012, in a special election to replace Republican Doug Reichley, who had been elected Lehigh County judge.
He later defeated one Republican primary challenger and three Democrats, in general elections, capturing no less than 57.3% of the vote.
In 2022, under redistricting, Mackenzie’s township became part of the 187th District. He defeated longtime incumbent Republican Gary Day in the primary election with 61% of the vote. He was unopposed in the general election.
In Harrisburg, Mackenzie is chair of the Labor & Industry Committee and co-chair of the House International Relations Caucus,
POLITICAL LEANINGS
Wild: National media have described Wild as a moderate. At a candidate forum on Blue Ridge Cable TV, she said she was in the top 10 of House members in a bipartisan ranking done by The Lugar Center and McCourt School at Georgetown University that looks at willingness to cross party aisles.
Republicans challenged her on this.
According to Lugar Center rankings, in the 117th Congress (2021-22), Wild was ranked 40th among 127 House member, whose scores were considered bipartisan. The rest had negative scores, meaning they did not work with members of the opposite party. When looking at all House members, Wild was in the top 10%.
For 2023, the first half of the 118th Congress, she was ranked 109 out of 129. Among all members, she was in the top 40%.
A Wild campaign spokesperson said Wild typically uses a full two-year term of Congress when discussing her bipartisan ranking of being in the top 10% and that the 2023 ranking only gives half of a two-year term.
Wild typically backs the Biden agenda, including the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill, CHIPS Act and Inflation Reduction Act. In 2022, she voted in favor of the first gun law passed by Congress in 30 years. Among its measures, the bill expanded background checks for persons age 21 and under who want to buy a gun and added dating partners to the list of people convicted of domestic abuse who can’t own a gun.
Wild twice joined Democrats in voting to impeach President Trump (Dec. 17, 2019 and Jan. 13, 2021). The Senate failed to convict Trump of any of the charges.
Wild said she has “defied my own party on a number of occasions.”
She cited her vote against the 2020 Heroes Act, which would have provided a $3 trillion stimulus package in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
At the time, Wild said she voted no because the bill did not have bipartisan support and thus would probably fail, and didn’t do enough to help struggling families.
Wild generated national press when she voiced concerns to party leaders that her constituents were questioning whether Biden should remain the presidential nominee after his poor showing at a June debate with Trump.
She sidesteps questions on whether she supports Vice President Kamala Harris, who replaced Biden as the nominee when he stepped down in July.
“Our district is bipartisan. We have Democrats, Republicans, almost an equal number. We have a lot of independents. And your job as the representative is to represent your district, not to represent your party,” Wild said on “Business Matters.”
Mackenzie typically backs the Republican agenda in Harrisburg.
In July, he joined fellow Republicans in voting no to the 2024-25 state budget, which contained no new taxes, included a $1 billion increase in K-12 funding and used a new school district formula to make funding more equitable.
Mackenzie has voted in favor of loosening gun regulations and requiring voter ID at the polls. He sponsored a bill to create a school voucher system and supported a bill that sought to ban transgender girls from female sports teams in public schools, colleges and universities.
Mackenzie has bucked his party on occasion, including his support of a recently proposed bill that would prevent Pennsylvania authorities from assisting other states in seeking women who cross state lines for abortions.
Mackenzie supports Trump, who endorsed his run for Congress.
He joined a group of Republican Pennsylvania legislators who sought to temporarily withhold Electoral College votes from Biden in the 2020 presidential election.
The group filed an amicus curiae brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in a lawsuit that, among other issues, challenged pandemic-related decisions made in Pennsylvania over mail-in ballot deadlines. The case was rejected by the high court.
“I threw the challenge flag. Ultimately, it went to court and it was not accepted. So the judges – or the referees in the analogy – did not agree with our challenge on the field. And the game ended. Joe Biden won the election. But that doesn't mean that we have to be silent on this issue,” Mackenzie said of the amicus brief.
ABORTION
Wild has co-sponsored or supported bills to ensure access to abortion for all women, ensure access to military personnel, establish legal rights to use contraceptives and to stop states from interfering with access to out-of-state abortions.
She supports the Women’s Health Protection Act of 2023. Among its provisions, it would protect the rights of patients and health care providers to terminate pregnancies prior to viability without limitations on the method.
It would allow the use of drugs such as mifepristone to induce abortion and allow women to travel to other states to obtain abortions without fear of arrest.
In 7th, Wild and Mackenzie have clear differences on abortion
Worried that the Dobbs decision would lead to the erosion of other reproductive rights, Wild took a leading role in January when she introduced the Right to In Vitro Act to protect in vitro fertilization as a legal method for conception.
In an interview, Wild called allegations of Democrats supporting abortion on demand a “Republican talking point, which is ludicrous.” Such allegations now include the unfounded assertion by former President Donald Trump and others that abortions are taking place after birth.
“There will always be guardrails” limiting what providers can do, Wild said.
Mackenzie backed a now-defunct, proposed constitutional amendment in 2021 that explicitly stated abortion is not a right in Pennsylvania.
In 2017, he voted in favor of restricting abortions beyond 20 weeks of gestational age. The bill made no exceptions for rape, incest or fetal abnormalities, which sometimes aren’t detected until around that gestational age. Current Pennsylvania law permits abortions up to 23 weeks gestational age. After that, they can only be performed if the life or health of the mother is at risk.
In recent interviews and forums, he has said abortions should be permitted in cases involving the life or health of the mother and rape and incest. He said he does not support a federal ban on abortion.
Mackenzie promotes his success in passing his Maternal Mortality Review Committee, which reviews maternal death to develop strategies to reduce preventable morbidity, mortality and racial disparities related to pregnancy.
Mackenzie’s campaign website makes no mention of his positions on abortion. It had previously had a line saying he has a “100% pro-life voting record from the PA Pro-Life Federation.”
His campaign said the reference was removed because Mackenzie’s rating was changed to “leans” pro-life because of the vote he took to prevent Pennsylvania state dollars to help other states enforce their stricter abortion laws.
IMMIGRATION
Wild wants to restrict border crossings through increased personnel, technology and, where needed, border walls. She supports better treatment for asylum seekers and co-sponsored a bill to offer pathway to citizenship for the so-called Dreamers, noncitizen adults who were brought to the U.S. without legal documentation by their parents as children.
She supported the bipartisan bill rejected by the Senate in a 49-50 vote in February after Trump spoke out against it. It would have made it harder to gain asylum, expand the number of detention beds, hire more asylum officers and security agents, increase screenings for fentanyl and other illicit drugs, and close the border if more than 5,000 migrants a day try to cross unlawfully in the course of a week or more than 8,500 in any given day.
In 7th, Wild and Mackenzie want border crossings reduced but differ on methods
It also would have provided $60.1 billion for Ukraine, $14.1 billion in security assistance for Israel and $10 billion in humanitarian aid for civilians in conflict zones including Gaza, the West Bank and Ukraine.
In May, Wild joined 14 Democratic colleagues in calling on President Biden to take executive action to address border issues.
One month later, Biden barred daily asylums when the number of border encounters reaches 2,500 per day, according to The Associated Press.
The U.S. Border Patrol logged 58,038 encounters with migrants crossing the Mexican border in August, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of the latest available government statistics. That was a 77% drop from 249,741 encounters in December 2023, which was a record monthly high, Pew said.
Wild voted no to House Resolution 2, the Republican answer to February’s bipartisan bill, which included more border walls, raising asylum qualification standards, increased detention capacity and fines and imprisonment for foreigners who overstay their visas.
Mackenzie wants to withhold taxpayer-funded grants from sanctuary cities and crack down on birth tourism in which foreign women allegedly have babies in the U.S. so they can be U.S. citizens.
When asked if he supports Trump’s plan to use the National Guard and military to help round up and remove undocumented workers if he is elected president, his campaign released a statement.
It said Mackenzie’s “immediate priority, before anything else, needs to be border security that staunches the flow of illegal immigrants into our nation. That means finishing the wall, reinstating the Remain in Mexico policy, ending catch and release, adding additional infrastructure to the border, and hiring more border officers.”
Mackenzie introduced a series of bills in Harrisburg on illegal immigration, including his successful Construction Industry Employee Verification law. Other proposals include expanding the federal E-Verify system for state grant recipients and the meatpacking, food processing and lodging industries.
ECONOMY
Wild said it’s important to reduce costs “across the board.” She said “corporate price gouging” is a real thing as evidenced by goods that cost more but have smaller packaging with less product in them.
She said she wants to lower taxes for the middle class. According to the non-partisan Brookings Institute, many household tax cuts in Trump’s 2017 tax reform bill will expire next year.
Wild wants to maintain Medicare and Social Security benefits but supports raising the level of income that is taxed for Social Security. For 2024, people pay no Social Security tax on income greater than $168,600. For 2025, that threshold rises to $176,100.
She highlights her support of the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill, CHIPS Act and Inflation Reduction Act as examples of how she’s worked to help the Lehigh Valley economically and create jobs.
Mackenzie, Wild present different approaches on economic issues, Social Security
In January, the Lehigh Valley International Airport received $40.7 million to build a cargo complex. In August, Allentown received a $20 million grant to provide job training, child care and transportation to eligible recipients.
In October, Infinera, a semiconductor company based in Silicon Valley with a plant in Upper Macungie Township, became eligible for up to $93 million in CHIPs money to expand its operations in California and build a testing and production facility in Bethlehem.
Wild said the price of insulin was capped at $35 for Medicare patients while an agreement was reached with pharmaceutical companies to lower the cost of 10 of the most expensive prescription medications.
She said Mack Trucks received a $200 million grant for electric vehicle production in Lower Macungie and two other facilities.
Mackenzie said he has never voted for a tax increase. He wants to maintain Social Security and Medicare. He doesn’t think Social Security and tips should be taxed.
Mackenzie said the reason for inflation is simple: Government spending by the Biden administration through the American Rescue Plan, Infrastructure Act, CHIPs Act and Inflation Reduction Act. He wants to reign in government spending.
Mackenzie criticizes Wild for not doing more to lower drug prices, saying the price of every drug should have been lowered.
He said the CHIPs Act has been a failure, citing a recent announcement by Intel, a grant recipient with a plant in Allentown, to lay off 15,000 employees, including dozens in Allentown.
He has sponsored a number of measures to help ease the pressure on Pennsylvania residents and others.
He was a co-sponsor of 2023's successful House Bill 1100, which expanded the Property Tax/Rent Rebate program for renters and homeowners age 65 and older. He was the prime sponsor of 2013’s Act 52, which among other provisions eliminated the inheritance tax for small, family-owned businesses and eliminated the realty transfer tax for fire and ambulance companies going through a merger.
In December, he voted yes to the Pennsylvania Fiscal Code, which increased the child and dependent care tax credit to match the federal credit.
FOREIGN POLICY
While the candidates agree that Israel must defend itself, they disagree on continued U.S. support for Ukraine, which exceeds $170 billion since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
Wild said the U.S. needs to make sure Ukraine wins the war. “This is [President Vladimir] Putin's war. He would love to take over Ukraine and then move into Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe. And we can't let that happen. We will end up with World War III on our hands, and all of our European allies will be greatly affected.”
Wild pointed to backing a foreign aid bill that Congress passed in April that, besides providing aid to Ukraine and Israel, included $2 billion for Taiwan and other Pacific-area allies for weapons purchases to “counter looming threats from China.”
Mackenzie said it’s time to negotiate an end to the Ukrainian war.
“I continue to believe that diplomacy is necessary in order to achieve the peaceful resolution we all desire. We are now approaching three years of a bloody stalemate despite hundreds of billions of dollars being spent by American taxpayers,” he said.
He also doesn’t believe a win for Russia in Ukraine would lead Putin to invade other countries, saying such a suggestion is “fear mongering” used by neocons to support “forever wars.”
Mackenzie said he supports NATO and if member countries were paying the required 2% of their gross national product on defense, there would be more money going to Ukraine. According to PBS News Hour, 18 of the 32 NATO member countries are paying 2%.
He also doesn’t believe a win for Russia in Ukraine would lead Putin to invade other countries.
Since Biden has been president, Mackenzie said, two wars broke out — in the Middle East and in Ukraine — and a third could break out in Asia, where China is a threat to the region.