Kevin Dellicker says his business, military experience make him most qualified candidate in 7th Congressional District
Dellicker faces two other candidates in April 23 primary for GOP nomination
Editor’s note: This post on Kevin Dellicker is the last of three profiles of candidates seeking the Republican nomination for the 7th Congressional District. You can read the profiles about Ryan Mackenzie here and Maria Montero here.
Update: The reference to a Human Life Amendment was changed to reflect Dellicker’s response about the iniative in general, not a specific provision of it.
Kevin Dellicker doesn’t consider himself a politician, even though he’s making his second consecutive run for a seat in Congress from the 7th District.
“One of the big problems that we face is we keep advancing these career politicians who are in it for themselves and not for the people,” he said during a recent interview from his home in Heidelberg Township. “And they're doing it for their livelihood. That changes the way they think. It changes the way they act. And I think it changes the way they enact policy when they're down in Washington.”
Dellicker said his experience in the military and as a businessman sets him apart from most people who run for Congress, including his two opponents in the April 23 Republican primary.
Ryan Mackenzie of Lower Macungie Township has been a state representative for 12 years, currently serving the 187th District. Maria Montero, a lawyer from Easton, has dabbled in party-level political activities over the years.
The Republican nominee will face incumbent Democrat Susan Wild of South Whitehall Township, who is unopposed in her primary and is seeking a fourth term in Congress.
Dellicker said he and the other two candidates are conservatives and share similar positions on many issues. That’s where his experience is an important distinction, he said.
“What I'm interested in is having voters understand why am I qualified to weigh in on these issues in the first place. … How are you going to be able to react based on your life experiences to be able to tackle these issues? So, border security. I have 28 years of military experience, and I did four combat zone deployments. So I understand what overseas fighting is all about, but I also did domestic operations, and I'm trained in Homeland Security missions as well,” he said, noting it also better prepares him for such issues than Wild.
Dellicker, who had never sought political office before, was defeated by Lisa Scheller, a former Lehigh County commissioner, by only 1,700 votes in a campaign in which he was outspent 10-1. Scheller lost to Wild that November, a repeat outcome of their 2020 matchup.
Dellicker said he didn’t intend to run a second time.
Thinking Wild would be vulnerable in 2024, he talked to potential candidates – those like him who would be “citizen legislators,” not “professional politicians.” He found no one like that willing to run. A year ago, after talking with family and supporters, he said he decided to run again.
Members of the U.S. House serve two-year terms and earn $174,000 a year. Only Democrats and Republicans can vote for their respective party candidates in the primary.
Background
Dellicker, 53, graduated from Northwestern Lehigh High School and received college degrees from Penn State University (environmental science and history), Syracuse University (master’s in public administration), and Liberty University (master of divinity in global studies).
Early in his career, he worked in the public sector, first with the New York State Senate Majority Counsel Office, providing support for economic and environmental policies from 1994-97, and then in Republican Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge’s administration as an economics policy adviser from 1998-2002.
Dellicker is a veteran who served four tours in Afghanistan and Iraq in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks as an intelligence officer with the National Guard. He is now a commander of his National Guard unit.
Nineteen years ago, he started Dellicker Strategies, which advises businesses and organizations, including school districts in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, about broadband internet access and cybersecurity.
In the community, he has served on the Lehigh County Workforce Investment Board and the Greater Lehigh Valley Chamber of Commerce Public Policy Committee. He has coached youth soccer, baseball and wrestling teams. He is a member of the American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars and National Rifle Association.
The 2020 elections prompted him to consider running for office.
“For me, the turning point was after the Republicans lost all the elections back in 2020. We lost the presidency. We lost the House. It looked like we were going to get the Senate, but we lost the Senate,” he said.
Another factor? His three sons were older.
“I would've never done this if I had little kids because I would've missed too much. My kids are grown up now. They're in college. I still spend a ton of time with them. But if this was a choice between running for Congress and missing my kids' lives, I wouldn't have taken that.”
The 7th District seat, as in 2022, is a critical race that could affect the balance of Congress, with Republicans holding on to a slim five-vote majority.
Dellicker sees this year’s election as an opportunity to add to the GOP majority to counter “Washington Democrats [who] are enacting policies that are harmful to our country.”
ISSUES
Security and the border
“One of the things that we need to do is make people feel safe again,” he said. “I think there's anxiety around the Lehigh Valley and across the country, because people are worried about their basic security. And that stems from the events they see around the world where they're wondering what's going on.”
He pointed to the war in Ukraine; the war between Israel and Hamas; China’s belligerence; the Biden administration’s “botched Afghanistan withdrawal.”
Controlling the flow of migrants at the southern border is critical. “I do think it's the most urgent national security threat that we face,” he said.
“We don't know who's coming across the border. We don't know who's already come. … Securing the border has got to be the top priority for Congress.”
He supports keeping migrants outside the U.S. while their requests for asylum are processed. "Now migrants enter the U.S., claim asylum and are allowed to stay in this country while the claims are processed and heard in the courts, which can take several years,” he said.
Dellicker would not have supported the bipartisan border security bill that came from the Senate but died in the House.
Among other things, according to The New York Times, the bill would have required the border to close if more than 5,000 migrants a day tried to cross unlawfully in the course of a week or more than 8,500 in any given day.
“The idea that you're going to allow between 4,000 and 5,000 people across a day before you trigger any kind of methods to keep them out, that's, that's almost 2 million people a year,” he said. “That's what we're already having. So it was almost institutionalizing letting that many people in at once.”
Economy and taxes
Although the inflation rate has fallen in recent months with an increase in March, Dellicker said people are still struggling with high prices for necessities such as food.
“The cause of the inflation was primarily the deficit spending that we saw in the early days of the Biden administration, when they just kept passing these stimulus bills for various things,” he said.
Those programs were the American Rescue Plan (which among other things provided financial assistance to people, small businesses and state and local governments during the pandemic), the CHIPS Act, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal, and the Inflation Reduction Act.
If he were in the House at the time, he said he would have voted against all of those proposals, which accounted for $4 trillion in deficit spending.
“I don't think any four of those bills were necessary. … What you saw is a successive flooding of our money supply with cash that wasn't backed by products, which is the classic driver of inflation. And everybody wondered, ‘Oh my goodness. How do we get inflation?’ Well, that's why it's a textbook reason for inflation.”
During the early days of the Covid pandemic in 2020, Dellicker Strategies accepted a $21,048 loan from the federal Paycheck Protection Program, which helped small businesses keep and pay employees during a time when many businesses closed operations. The government eventually forgave $20,959 of the loan.
Asked about accepting federal money for his business and criticizing federal spending programs under Biden, Dellicker in a statement said his company “was forced to close in-person operations, as were many small businesses, during the pandemic.” Unsure when his business could resume normal operations, he accepted the loan. He pointed out that PPP was an emergency spending program, but the Biden initiatives were not.
When the loan was forgiven, Dellicker said he and his wife, Susan, donated the money to the Greater Lehigh Valley Chamber of Commerce's restaurant relief fund and the Allentown Rescue MIssion.
Dellicker supports a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. “I don't know how we're ever going to control spending unless we get something,” he said, “that forces spendthrift congressmen from both parties to just never increase the budget.”
Such an amendment has been proposed in Congress since the 1990s but has never passed Congress and been sent to the states for ratification.
He also supports extending the Trump administration’s tax cuts that are set to expire at the end of 2025.
Tariffs
He would retain tariffs placed on goods made in China.
“I am tired of us acknowledging all the atrocities that the Chinese Communist Party is perpetrating upon us and our allies, whether it's economic, stealing trade secrets, devaluing their currency … using slave labor, polluting the whole world, and then selling their cheap products to us,” he said.
Also consider China’s cybersecurity threats, trade secret thefts and military buildup, he said. “We look at all this stuff and we acknowledge it, and then we say, ‘Let's go cut another trade deal with China.’ We should be increasing tariffs on China and moving away from doing business with them, especially for critical things. And that's one of the things that former President Trump wants to do that I would certainly support.”
Social Security
“You have to preserve Social Security. I think that's a sacred pact that we make with our retirees. You can't change that. But the math doesn't work. … So we're going to have to tackle it whether politicians want to deal with it or not. I don't know what the solution is,” he said, adding Congress must examine various options.
Ukraine
Dellicker said he supported U.S. aid to Ukraine after Russia invaded the country two years ago. But as the war continued and Ukraine’s counteroffensives stalled, he no longer supports continuing U.S. assistance. However, if circumstances change, he could support renewing aid.
“I do think that it's in the vital interest of the United States that Russia does not take over the nation of Ukraine and annex it as part of Russia. Because if that happens, you're going to destabilize Europe,” he said.
His perspective is based on his knowledge of military operations. He disagrees with Ukraine’s intent to retake Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014.
“We need to watch it closely because we don't want Russia to take over the whole country, but we have the time and the wherewithal to let this play out for now. … What they need to be doing is defending their territorial integrity. … It's important that Ukraine doesn't let them come in further.”
Israel
Dellicker supports Israel’s war against Hamas.
In a candidate forum broadcast in March on WFMZ-TV’s “Business Matters,” he said “Israel is prosecuting a very difficult war. We can't forget what happened in October when Hamas invaded Israel. And we did give Israel the space they need to take care of business, which means taking out the Hamas leadership and rendering that organization incapable of launching further attacks. … [W]e need to let Israel have the space they need to finish the job.”
Abortion
Dellicker said he previously supported a Human Life Amendment. But he said that measure is no longer needed because the Supreme Court overturned the right to abortion in its Dobbs decision in 2022.
Congress could still consider legislation regarding abortions, though.
“People should not have abortions once the baby can feel pain and survive outside the womb. So I'd be willing to advance that in Congress as well,” he said.
“These are the reasons why people seem to be settling on this idea of [no abortions after] 15, 16 weeks is because that seems to be the consensus of when unborn children can feel pain. If that's what the number is, I would support that.”
He supports laws to prevent federal funds to pay for abortions and to require girls younger than 18 needing permission from a parent to get an abortion.
He referenced a debate from 2022 where abortion was discussed.
“One of the questions was about exceptions. And I always remind people that what I said is that if I could vote for a bill to protect unborn children that included exceptions for rape, incest and to protect the life of the mother, then I would vote for that,” he said in the interview.
He did say in that debate he would vote against a bill that would allow abortions if the women’s health was a factor but her life was not in danger.
He criticized Gov. Shapiro’s decision last year to stop funding pregnancy counseling centers that don’t offer abortions, a decision made in the wake of the Dobbs decision.
“We should be enhancing and promoting maternal health care, not targeting it, just because it happens to have the word life in the name,” Dellicker said.
Guns
Dellicker opposes gun control efforts.
“The problem is fundamentally that we have a Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, and everyone always wants to focus on the weapon and not the individual that pulls the trigger. … Instead of trying to restrict our Second Amendment rights, we need to preserve them.”
He opposes what are known as red flag laws that allow courts to temporarily seize guns from people who are considered a danger to themselves or others.
“I don't like them,” he said. “I don't know how you can enforce due process with something like that.”
Elections
Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in Pennsylvania in 2020 by 80,555 votes out of nearly 7 million cast but Trump has continued to say he won the state.
Dellicker, asked if Trump won Pennsylvania, said, “Yeah, I mean, there was serious election fraud. I think the two most egregious examples were the way certain actors in our own FBI and federal law enforcement agencies advanced a trumped-up story about Trump’s collusion with Russia and suppressed a story about the hiding Hunter Biden laptop story.”
He added, “So, to me that's election fraud when you're actively interfering with an election in an attempt to manipulate it. That can't happen in a democracy.”
Federal Judge Matthew Brann, two weeks after the 2020 election, dismissed a lawsuit filed by the Trump campaign to stop the state’s certification of the vote, saying the campaign presented no evidence of fraud or corruption in the election process.
Dellicker said despite questions about the election Biden is president, and he doesn’t want to “re-litigate” the 2020 election.
“But you also had other things occur in Pennsylvania, like changing the rules in the middle of the voting,” he said.
He said counties approached mail-in ballots differently. Some counties allowed people to deposit their ballots in secure drop boxes and permitted voters to sign or date ballot materials if that information was missing; other counties did neither.
Although there has been no evidence of fraud with Pennsylvania’s mail-in voting system, Dellicker remains suspicious of it.
“We can't establish a chain of custody with the mail-in ballots that can ensure the integrity of those things,” he said.
According to the Pennsylvania Department of State, its SURE system tracks all mail-in ballots through barcodes, which electronically record when a ballot is sent to a voter and when it is received by a county election office. Voters who enroll in mail-in voting can choose to receive emails on the status of their ballots, including when it is received by a county. The SURE system does not record votes.
Dellicker supports voter ID requirements, where people must show valid identification to vote at the polls. He also opposes universal mail-in voting, which Pennsylvania began in 2020. Voting by mail should be confined to traditional absentee and overseas ballots, where you need a valid reason to vote by mail.
“I think you should have the old absentee ballot system where if you're overseas serving in the military, or if you're sick or infirm or you know you're going to be out of town, then you have an absentee ballot,” he said. Otherwise, “get up off your couch, go to the polls and vote. You should be able to vote in person with an ID.”
Environment/climate change
Dellicker said President Biden’s climate policies “are stifling creativity, innovation, and they're creating inflation” because they don’t use energy that is produced in the U.S.
“When you're closing down petroleum-based and coal-fired power plants in the United States and then you're allowing China to build new ones so they can build solar panels at the plants that they're using the coal for and then export it to the United States,” he said during WFMZ’s “Business Matters” forum. He said that there is some climate alarmism right now and also criticized tax credits for electric vehicle buyers.
House Speaker Mike Johnson
Some Republicans in Congress, led by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, are critical of House Speaker Mike Johnson for compromising with Democrats to keep funding the government so it can remain open.
Dellicker supports Johnson. “I wouldn't vote to replace him,” he said. “I wish Republicans could stick together more. I do like Speaker Johnson. I think he's doing the best that he can with a very difficult situation to try to manage a conference.”