Bob Brooks running for Congress to fix people’s problems
Editor’s note: This is one of four profiles on the candidates seeking the Democratic nomination for the 7th Congressional District on May 19. The others are Carol Obando-Derstine, a former PPL supervisor and aide to former U.S. Sen. Bob Casey Jr.; Ryan Crosswell, a former federal prosecutor; and Lamont McClure, who most recently was the Northampton County executive. The winner will face incumbent Republican Ryan Mackenzie, who is unopposed in the primary.
Democrat Bob Brooks did not plan to seek the 7th District congressional seat. Indeed, last April, he and his union endorsed Lamont McClure, who at the time was the only announced Democratic candidate.
“It is our honor as members of the Pennsylvania Professional Fire Fighters Association to endorse Lamont McClure,” Brooks said in a press release from the McClure campaign. “We need public servants like Lamont who support Pennsylvania’s firefighters and first responders.”
So how did Brooks — a motorcycle-riding, lawn-cutting/snow-plowing business owner, former Bethlehem firefighter, head of the state firefighters union and an assistant Nazareth Area High school baseball coach — go from McClure supporter to McClure opponent?
That path began last summer after Brooks was encouraged to jump into the race by western Pennsylvania Congressman Chris Deluzio and Gov. Josh Shapiro, both of whom knew Brooks from leading the PPFFA.
“Chris Deluzio, Josh Shapiro endorsing me and supporting me gave me a push to say, ‘I can do this,’“ he said in an interview with Armchair Lehigh Valley.
By the time Brooks entered the race Aug. 26, three other candidates had joined McClure – Carol Obando-Derstine, Ryan Crosswell and Mark Pinsley (who has since dropped out) – in vying for the Democratic nomination for the chance to challenge U.S. Rep. Ryan Mackenzie, the first-term Republican.
The 7th District, which comprises all of Carbon, Lehigh and Northampton counties and a small part of Monroe, is critical to determine which party controls the House next year.
Brooks decided to run for Congress because Washington is “broken” and he can help repair it.
“Sending more attorneys and rich, elite people down there is not going to help fix it,” he said. “I think [voters] want to see everyday people stepping up and do this job.”
That’s a blueprint for Democratic candidates in 2026, he said.
“Trump won because he talked to people about their issues. He didn’t do anything about ‘em. He’s doing the opposite … . I can talk to them because I’ve lived [like] them. I’ve been close to foreclosure. … I’ve worked two, three jobs. I want to take everyday people’s problems and fix that.”
To view more photos of Bob Brooks during the campaign, click here.
Brooks’ blue-collar persona has attracted national media attention, including a January story in Politico Playbook (“The candidate who wants to have a beer with you”) and one the next month in Time (“The Democrats’ Blue-Collar Brigade”), which focused on Brooks but mentioned other House and Senate candidates with similar backgrounds trying to reclaim working-class voters who switched to Donald Trump and Republicans in 2024.
Brooks got a huge boost last week when the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which had remained neutral, took the unusual step of endorsing him in a contested primary and will contribute organizational and financial support to his candidacy as part of its Blue to Red campaign.
That came after a recent poll, paid for by the Congressional Progressive Caucus PAC that has endorsed Brooks, shows him in the lead with 24%, followed by McClure (17%), Obando-Derstine (12%) and Crosswell (9%). However, most voters (36%) were undecided and a small number (2%) favored a candidate not on the ballot. The poll of 400 likely voters, conducted April 16-19 by GBAO, had a margin of error of +/- 4.9 percentage points.
Money from outside groups to boost his candidacy has rolled in as well, with more than $1.2 million having been spent or committed for advertising and mailers in only four weeks through April 27, according to filings with the Federal Election Commission.
Top spenders are the Congressional Progressive Caucus ($140,000) and Stronger Together PA ($1,006,015), a Super PAC formed Jan. 23 whose website features Brooks and no other candidate. That’s in addition to the $918,817 expended by the Bob Brooks for Congress committee, bringing the total spent on his primary effort to $2.1 million. His campaign committee raised $1,198,431 as of April 29.
The large amount of outside spending for Brooks moved him past Crosswell in overall spending, the candidate who raised the most money ($1,757,146) of the four Democratic candidates. Crosswell’s campaign received $38,687 worth of support (campaign literature) from Integrity PAC, according to FEC filings.
Other outside money came from a suspected Republican-allied PAC, which committed to spend more than $500,000 to air an ad opposing Brooks and Crosswell while endorsing McClure, according to reporting last week from Punchbowl News. The PAC also mailed a flier to Democratic voters with the same message. Such independent expenditures by PACs are prohibited by election regulations from coordinating its effort with a candidate’s campaign.
Not all of the attention on Brooks has been positive.
In April, he apologized for seven-year-old Facebook posts that called former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick a “douchebag” for kneeling to show support for racial justice during the National Anthem and reposting an image after a mass shooting that included a symbol used by the anti-federal government militia Three Percenters.
“Politics is nasty – a bunch of DC insiders who don’t want more working people in office are selectively digging up years-old Facebook posts,” Brooks said in a statement from his campaign when the posts were publicized last month. “I’ve shared a few stupid things over the years, and for that I am sorry. I believe who I’ve fought for and my values have always been clear.”
He also found himself defending a lawsuit filed in Northampton County Court in February by his former mother-in-law claiming he owed her $162,537 for a 2008 loan plus interest. His lawyers said Brooks is not responsible for the payment and the lawsuit should be dismissed.
And last week, Axios reported that earlier this month Brooks told a group of Lehigh University students that Shapiro in 2024 asked PPFFA to support the Republican candidate for state treasurer, Stacy Garrity, over the Democratic candidate Erin McClelland, who questioned whether Shapiro could serve under Kamala Harris as vice president if she were elected. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz was selected as her running mate. Garrity is on the November ballot for governor, trying to deny Shapiro a second term.
A Shapiro spokesman told Axios the governor never made the request and Brooks told Axios, “I misspoke and made an inaccurate comment.”
Background
Robert Brooks, 53, lives in Moore Township with his wife, Jennifer. He grew up in North Adams, a small city in the northwest corner of Massachusetts, near the Vermont and New York borders.
When he was a senior in high school, the family home – then across the state line in Stamford, Vermont – was damaged by fire, he said.
After the fire, his mother moved to the Bath area where her parents – his grandparents – lived while he remained to finish high school before following his mother to the Lehigh Valley.
Brooks said his grandfather, a truck driver and a member of the Teamsters union, showed him the importance of unions. Brooks got a job, also as a truck driver, delivering Budweiser for Raymond Baurkot and Sons Beer Distributor of Easton, which he did for three years. He joined the same Teamsters as his grandfather did.
He was a volunteer firefighter, when a friend suggested they take a civil service test to become firefighters in Bethlehem — a paid job. “They give you a check for this?” Brooks recalled asking. “And he was like, ‘Yeah.’ “
He became a firefighter, not because his house was destroyed by fire but because his uncle and a cousin — whom he called his “heroes” — were firemen.
The Bethlehem Fire Department hired him in 2005. For most of his time there, he was the driver-operator of Ladder 2. He also became active in the Bethlehem Firefighters IAFF Local 735, holding every position in the local except treasurer. After working for the city for 20 years, he retired.
A few years before that, he joined PPFFA, holding regional positions until being elected president in December 2021, a position he still holds.
In 2022, he first met Shapiro, then the state attorney general who was running for governor, which marked the beginning of their relationship that has continued.
“He called me from his personal cell phone. He wanted our support,” Brooks said. “I was able to pull every local in the state together to say, ‘Okay, that’s our guy.’’’
The 7,000-member PFFA was the first group to endorse Shapiro that year, according to City & State Pennsylvania. It also endorsed Shapiro’s running mate, Austin Davis, who also endorsed Brooks for Congress. The Shapiro-Davis ticket was elected with 57% of the vote.
Brooks points to a signature accomplishment as union president when he successfully lobbied state lawmakers over several years to expand workers compensation benefits to include firefighters and other first responders who suffer post-traumatic stress injuries. A study published in Clinical Psychology Review 2025 concluded that 1 in 7 first responders suffers from PTSI.
“You deal with ... taking babies out of a house that are not alive anymore. That’s not normal,” he said. “Everybody’s got a coffee cup, and that coffee cup overflows eventually, and you need help.”
The bill passed the House and Senate with overwhelming bipartisan support. Shapiro signed it into law Oct. 29, 2024, with the expanded benefits taking effect a year later.
Brooks said he called Shapiro, who is Jewish, to offer comfort and support after the governor’s mansion was set on fire before the family’s seder on the first night of Passover in April 2025.
“Bob has always had my back – and I am proud to endorse him in this race and stand with him in the fight to make life more affordable and get stuff done for our communities,” Shapiro, who is featured in a TV ad touting Brooks, said in a statement issued by his gubernatorial campaign.
Brooks also lobbied for another bill — the Social Security Fairness Act. During a Democratic 7th District candidate debate last month on Blue Ridge Cable TV, he said the efforts of him and others led to passage of the legislation. President Biden signed the bill into law before leaving office in January 2025. The law allowed first responders, teachers, nurses and others who receive public pensions and their survivors to collect full Social Security benefits.
Lawsuit
On Feb. 16, Brooks’ former mother-in-law, Carol Wiley – he and his first wife, Jennifer, are divorced – filed a lawsuit in Northampton County Court alleging that Brooks owes her $162,537 for a $55,000 loan she made in June 12, 2008, when Brooks and Jennifer, who were engaged at the time, bought property in a Moore Township subdivision owned by Michael Wiley.
Carol Wiley’s initial lawsuit was filed in August 2018. A county judge ruled in Wiley’s favor Sept. 11, 2020, and noted Brooks owed Wiley $130,386, reflecting the principal and interest on the loan. Brooks appealed to state Superior Court, which denied the appeal in January 2022 and noted the judgment remained in effect.
Brooks became sole owner of the property after he and his wife divorced in 2017, according to the response filed by the lawyers for Brooks.
In Brooks’ response to the current lawsuit, his lawyers contend that there was no intent to commit fraud — as alleged in the lawsuit — by transferring ownership to Brooks and his second wife, also named Jennifer. The response also notes that Wiley never placed a lien on the property with the county court for the unpaid loan and she filed her new lawsuit too late. It should have been filed by September 2025, within the required five years after the county court decision. But the lawsuit was filed six months later in February. Wiley’s lawyer says the new lawsuit is timely, having been filed within five years from the state Superior Court judgment in January 2022.
After the lawsuit was filed in February, the Brooks campaign released a statement from Brooks’ first wife, now Jennifer Kostenbader, who called the attacks on Brooks “egregious.”
“In 2004, my mother gave us land to build a home,” she said. “Over the following 12 years, she never once approached us to request payment for that land.” Kostenbader said she has had no “communication” with her mother for more than six years.
The lawsuit is pending, with a hearing on Brooks’ motion to dismiss the lawsuit scheduled for June 16.
Endorsements
Besides Shapiro and Deluzio, Brooks has been endorsed by key Democrats, including former U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who appeared at a March campaign event with Brooks in Easton; U.S. Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren; suburban Philadelphia U.S. Reps. Madeleine Dean and Chrissy Houlahan; and Maryland Congressman Jamie Raskin, who came to the Lehigh Valley last week to support Brooks.
Lehigh County elected officials who back Brooks are state Reps. Peter Schweyer and Mike Schlossberg, state Sen. Nick Miller and Allentown Mayor Matt Tuerk. He also has the support of about three dozen state lawmakers from outside the 7th District, and the support of more than a dozen national and local unions.
Both the Blue Dog PAC of moderate members of the U.S. House and the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
Brooks and McClure
Brooks was asked about informing McClure last year that he was rescinding his endorsement. He acknowledged it was a difficult phone call.
They had been friends and have union connections – Brooks as a union officer, McClure as a lawyer who represented Bethlehem Steel workers in court.
McClure said Brooks reached out to him when Lehigh Valley International Airport sought proposals in 2019 for firefighting services, which had been provided at the airport by union members who were concerned they could lose their jobs. The airport decided to stay with the union.
“Bob knew how pro-labor I was and wanted me to get involved and try and see if I could help them. I did. They got a [new] contract. … It demonstrates that Bob and I, at least politically, were close,” McClure said.
McClure appointed Brooks to a seat on the Lehigh-Northampton Airport Authority board in 2021.
When Brooks told McClure he was joining the race for Congress, he said McClure “wasn’t thrilled, but he wasn’t mad.”
Asked about the call, McClure said, “Was I surprised, disappointed? Yeah. Would I call it a betrayal? No.”
Facebook posts
Last month, Brooks apologized for two Facebook posts from 2019 that supported conservative perspectives, calling former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick a “douchebag” in one and offering a pro-gun response to mass shootings in another.
During the Blue Ridge Cable TV debate, McClure pointed to a third Facebook post, from Sept. 5, 2012, when President Obama was running for reelection against Mitt Romney. Brooks reposted a post from the pro-labor group Peoples World that noted, “Romney opposes bargaining right for fire fighters and police,” adding his comment: “This is why Obama is the choice, unfortunately he sucks, but Romney blows and is against the middle class!”
At the debate, McClure said, “I want to hear from Bob tonight why he thinks Barack Obama sucks.”
Brooks didn’t respond during the debate. Asked for a comment about McClure’s statement, the campaign said, “Bob campaigned and voted for Barack Obama twice. Not only is he a lifelong Democrat, but he’s lived Democratic values.” The campaign also pointed to the many endorsements from Democrats.
Issues
Iran war: “Donald Trump’s war in Iran is a tragedy that is costing American lives and raising prices here at home,” he said in a statement from his campaign when asked about the war.
“My stepson is in the Air Force, and I worry every day that he’ll be sent to fight in a war that Congress did not authorize and the American people do not want. Mackenzie’s continued support for this war is disqualifying. Politicians have always found reasons we don’t have money for working people but limitless money to start wars. When I get to Congress, I’ll fight to spend money right here in the Lehigh Valley, not on endless wars overseas.”
Brooks’ comments on the following issues are taken from his website, which outlines his platform.
Affordable housing: “We need to build more starter homes, crack down on corporate landlords and rent gouging, and expand programs that help first-time homebuyers get their start. And yes, sometimes cut rules and red tape that make it harder and more expensive to get homes built.”
He supports the HELPER Act legislation before Congress, which “would be a game changer and help millions get low interest VA-style mortgages. I will be a day 1 cosponsor. “
Healthcare: He supports restoring cuts to Medicaid and favors Medicare for All as health insurance.
“In 2023, 20 million Americans were stuck with $220 billion in medical debt, while 16 of the biggest drug companies raked in $684 billion. We spend the most money per capita than any other developed nation in the world, with lower life expectancies than all but a few. People skip prescriptions and avoid seeing doctors because they can’t pay their bills.”
Taxes: “We need to pass a billionaire minimum tax: a baseline tax rate the ultra-wealthy can’t dodge. In 2022, the 400 richest Americans paid an average federal tax rate of just 3.4% on their wealth, while ordinary workers paid 14% or more. The 2017 Trump Tax Cuts and Jobs Act handed massive breaks to billionaires and big corporations, exploding the national debt and leaving working families to pick up the tab. Repealing those giveaways could raise over $1.5 trillion – enough to lower the debt, expand healthcare, and strengthen the safety net without raising taxes on working people.”
Immigration: “In America, we don’t send masked men to kidnap people off the street and throw them into unmarked cars. It’s … un-American. We need an immigration system that deters illegal entry and secures our border, while treating people humanely and give law-abiding folks a shot at earning citizenship.”
Energy: “We need energy that works for working families, not just big oil companies. That means creating good-paying union jobs in clean energy, protecting our air and water, taking on the climate crisis, and investing in the industries of tomorrow. Pennsylvania can lead the way by building wind, solar, and power projects that put people to work. But we need to be serious about capacity building. Nuclear power is clean, safe and underutilized. I’ll work to approve new nuclear and natural gas power plants while we build up renewables.”
Guns: “I’m a firefighter who owns guns and grew up around guns. I respect the Second Amendment. But guns are now the leading cause of death for American kids, and in 2024 there were 332 school shootings. We need commonsense laws: universal background checks, closing the gun-show loophole, and enforcing waiting periods so dangerous people don’t get their hands on guns.”
Medicaid/SNAP: In the 7th District, the Shapiro administration estimated that 17,519 people would lose Medicaid coverage and 6,096 would lose their SNAP benefits to buy food. “Carbon is also disproportionately affected by Mackenzie’s vote on the One Big Beautiful Bill to gut Medicaid and SNAP. I’ll work to repeal it and bring those dollars back.”
Brooks recently released what he called a “Put Out the FIre Agenda” that outlined positions on other issues, including banning members of Congress from stock trading and from becoming lobbyists, establishing term limits (10 years for House members, 12 for senators), repeal anti-union legislation, and break up corporate monopolies.