Should an elected official be able to leverage their policy votes for personal profit? An overwhelming percentage of Americans say NO.
Mayor Cognetti of Scranton, Pennsylvania, agrees. In fact, this objection is partially fueling her run for the state’s open House seat. The independent mayor returns to the Contrarian to dish about incumbent Rep. Bresnahan Jr’s 180 on Congressional stock trading (which he has allegedly benefitted from). In her conversation with Jen, Cognetti also discusses needed government ethics reform, misallocated DHS funding, and Congressional abdication in light of the war on Iran.
Paige Cognetti has served as the first female mayor of Scranton, PA since 2020. Cognetti is a former Scranton School Board member and Special Assistant to the State Auditor. You can access her campaign website here.
The following transcript has been edited for formatting purposes.
Jen Rubin
Hi, this is Jen Rubin, Editor-in-Chief of The Contrarian. We’re delighted to have back Paige Continetti. She is the mayor of Scranton, and she is running to unseat Republican Rob Brezahan. Welcome back, Paige, good to see you.
Paige Cognetti
You too, Jen.
Jen Rubin
You have… I’ve been, beating the drum, page against the machine, in part because your candidate, seems to have been trading stocks. that have something to do with his day job. We recently had some revelations that shed doubt on some of his claims. Tell us about that.
Paige Cognetti
So, we are in northeastern Pennsylvania, the 8th District. It’s, Scranton, Wilkes-Barre, the Poconos. It’s a beautiful district. I’m the mayor of Scranton. I’ve been in office for, 6 years in my 7th year now. And I came into office. I ran as an independent, against the local Democratic machine, who actually sued to try to get, me and other independents off of the ballot. We’ve been fighting the old way of doing things. The predecessor in Scranton, he went to prison for extortion. Sadly, a long… part of a long line of folks in northeastern Pennsylvania who have broken public trust and used their public office for personal gain. So, as mayor of Scranton in these years, we’ve had to really work hard to rebuild trust in our government. And unfortunately, in this new freshman representative, Rob Bresnahan, we have a guy who is clearly trading on his votes. He, in 2024, as a candidate, said it was, quote, sickening to make money off of your votes in Congress, and that congressional stock trading could end. That was an op-ed that he wrote, but then getting to Congress, as soon as he got there, he became one of the most active traders. And we can trace his votes and his trades. He traded defense stocks, bought defense stocks before Trump went into Iran for the first time. He sold Medicaid provider and hospital stocks before he voted to slash a trillion dollars of Medicare with H.R. 1. So, he is clearly voting and trading simultaneously. And through this, though, of course, he says he does not speak with his financial advisor. Last week, we got audio that was just from the radio, from the local radio from last spring, where he says to the host. that he speaks with his financial advisor about his upcoming positions. So here’s this guy who clearly says one thing and does another, and here we have him again saying, oh no, I don’t talk to my advisor, and on, you know, on audio, on the radio, saying, oh no, I talked to my financial advisor. This is the exact type of public corruption that people are so tired of in northeastern Pennsylvania. We’ve seen so many people just do these things, run for office for their own gain. Rob Bresnahan is literally making money off of people’s pain.
Jen Rubin
Did he have any reaction to the revelation?
Paige Cognetti
they tried to deflect and talk about other things, from what I could tell, which they’ve been doing for a very long time, right? It’s just… they have someone in Rob who is literally making money off of his office. It is very difficult, and it really takes a lot to become, as a freshman, one of the top stock traders in Congress. It is a problem on both sides of the aisle, it has been for quite some time. It’s just remarkable that he would run on it, and then become it, and then say that it was okay, say that he doesn’t talk to his advisor, oh no, he talks to his advisor. It just… he’s caught up in these lies, he’s backed in this corner, and so, you know, he’ll… he’ll do everything he can to, you know, paper over things, and they’re trying to do that on a number of fronts, but we’re not going to let him get out of that corner, we are going to keep hitting it, because It is, again, the type of behavior we’ve seen for far too long in northeastern Pennsylvania. It’s… our story in Scranton is, you know, coming in and rebuilding, and here’s this guy who thinks at the federal level in Congress that he can make money on his position in a district where people are really struggling.
Jen Rubin
To be clear, you would vote to ban stock trading by individual members of Congress. What else in the ethics realm do you think needs to be done to clean up Congress, and frankly, the executive branch as well?
Paige Cognetti
Yeah, as mayor, you know, we have to balance the budget. We can’t not work with our city councils. We have to have a balanced budget every single year. And I realize that it’s tough, but I think, you know, the no budget, no pay, right? There’s some… there’s some simple things that make sense to the American people that it would be very helpful if Congress would do. So when they’re unable to pass a budget, they should not take their paychecks, and those… those things are very simple. Public service is a choice. No one forces you to run for Congress. It is a sacrifice. Being mayor is a sacrifice. You know, I was supposed to… my position got a raise in January. I’m not taking that raise. Back in COVID, I gave 5% of my salary back. I don’t have a city car. I don’t have a city gas card. I buy my own stamps. And there are things that you should do in public office to show people that you are there for them, and I think the least that Congress can do is a no budget, no payroll, congressional stock trading. I mean, again, it’s not begrudging anybody making themselves wealthy in the markets, that’s fine, but just do it as a private citizen. We already have enough of a trust deficit in our Congress.
Jen Rubin
Speaking about not funding things, DHS has been closed down for more than 30 days. Democrats have asked Republicans to vote simply to fund the other functions that are not controversial, like TSA, like FEMA, like the Coast Guard. Republicans have refused, and instead, they’re threatening now to shut down, quote, smaller airports. What would that mean for your area, and what’s already happening at the airports to the Republican intransigence?
Paige Cognetti
I mean, these folks at TSA need to get paid. It’s not fair that they’re showing up for work and not getting paid. Those are, you know, this is… these are folks that are, I’m sure, living paycheck to paycheck, often in their households, with utility bills going up, with gas prices going up, with healthcare premiums going up, or just people not being able to afford healthcare at all. So, we’ve got to make sure that we are able to have our economy move, and people go see their families with Easter and Mother’s Day coming up. For us in Scranton, it’s more FEMA that we’re very concerned with. We have a BRIC grant application that was, you know, completely taken away last March. We had Attorneys general and our own Governor Josh Shapiro, who successfully sued to reinstate that program. But we’re waiting to see what will actually happen with those dollars, and with FEMA frozen out, that’s a big problem for us. And I’ve been talking to folks who are really counting on that money, and FEMA is frozen there. You literally can’t even call anyone. So we have got to get back on track, and the TSA and FEMA, it’s just so wrong that people are suffering for these politics, and because the administration has gone so far. To, you know, literally take people off the street in our communities.
Jen Rubin
President Trump, after running on a promise not to drag us into forever wars, has started a war with Iran that is spinning out of control. As you noted, gas prices are up, and they’re gonna go even higher. Crude prices were up to $118 a barrel this morning. Meanwhile, they say they need more money. They want to come to Congress and ask for 200B, with a billion dollars, and they want a defense budget next year. That would be $1.5 trillion. That’s a 50% increase. How would you respond to those kinds of requests?
Paige Cognetti
Our thoughts in Northeastern Pennsylvania are with the men and women that are overseas and their families. We have families who have children that are over there in harm’s way, and it is just excruciating to have such a lack of information about what is going on. We see the impact at home with gas prices. We’re already in a situation where we had a horrific deep freeze in January and February. People are They’re not sure how they’re going to pay their utility bills, and now gas prices are skyrocketing on top of that. Congress is focused on the wrong things. They’re focused on, some… anything, seemingly anything that is not the immediate needs of people like we have in northeastern Pennsylvania. Asking for $200 billion for a war that has really no information, no clarity, no clear goals, while we’re literally seeing people choose between rent and water bills is just such a… it’s so wrong to do that to people, and it’s so wrong to have military families so worried about our men and women abroad, and we’re… it’s excruciating that we have folks that are losing their lives, and we have such a lack of clarity for what the goals are.
Jen Rubin
No one wants the troops to go without. No one wants, frankly, the VA to go without, and yet this administration has cut the VA very painfully so. They’ve also failed 8 audits in a row. It seems that there is something wrong in the budgeting process at the Pentagon. You’ve gone through this in terms of, making do, as you say, balancing the budget when you need to. What’s your view on Pentagon spending and Pentagon operations? Frankly, Doge, no surprise, didn’t go into the Pentagon, didn’t cut back and find out where the waste, fraud, and abuse it really is.
Paige Cognetti
We have the best military in the world. We need to make sure that we continue to secure that advantage and continue to be the strongest nation. We have to be considerate, though, of what taxpayer dollars are funding, and, you know, in Scranton, at a smaller scale, we took a red pen to things and cut things, but we didn’t cut things and then go back and see if we needed them. the way that Doge just took a chainsaw to things has been so damaging. I mean, USAID is a great example. I mean, the… just killing our soft power overnight, while Christy Noem spends $220 million on an ad campaign to… it was just… these behaviors have been just so sad because people are suffering. The military budget is something that we need to be able to look at. We need to make sure that those contracts are procured well. And we have to make sure that our military continues to be strong. Those things can all happen at the same time. It’s worrisome when there is a lack of transparency. That’s what I want to do in Congress, is go in, hold folks accountable. I worked for the State Auditor General in Pennsylvania. We were holding school boards accountable, holding nursing homes accountable. You want to make sure that these things run as best as possible. You want your military to be as efficient as possible. Just like we want to do in local government.
Jen Rubin
Absolutely. Speaking of, the, spending, Congress gave, the Department of Homeland Security some $75 billion. They have used that on ad campaigns, they’ve used that to set up warehouses that are not compliant with basic. Legal, strictures on health, on food, on medical care. What is your view on what needs to happen with DHS? Democrats have put forth a bill to reform much of ICE. What do you think needs to be done? No one’s in favor of open borders, but the current system, obviously, is not working as it should be.
Paige Cognetti
The secure border is extremely important, and we can have that without buying, you know, billions of dollars of warehouses to potentially detain our neighbors. The secure border is a very, very important thing. I think that was a huge misstep during the Biden administration that they let happen what they let happen in the first couple of years. It was really terrible. I was in many meetings with other mayors who were asking the Biden administration to do more at the border. We need that secure border. What we don’t need are warehouses like we have seen in Pennsylvania pop up. where they seem to be planning to detain up to, in some cases, 8,500 people in a former Big Lots store. I mean, we are very, very concerned in Pennsylvania about what the DHS is looking at, and the sheer amount of dollars that they are looking to spend and have spent for this infrastructure and for their operations, when people are suffering, when people are no longer on their healthcare plans. It’s over 100,000 people in Pennsylvania who no longer have healthcare since January 1, since those subsidies expired. We have folks whose Medicaid has already impacted parents of special needs kids, and their Medicaid is cut for their child. That is what we need to be working on at home. We can secure the border, and we can also take care of our neighbors in northeastern Pennsylvania, the dollars that they’re spending at DHS are really, really going to the wrong thing.
Jen Rubin
President Trump has made billions in office in just the first year, and his family has, well, Jared Kushner is making deals as he’s supposed to be negotiating for the country in the Middle East. We’ve seen the crypto… folks make huge purchases of his own cryptocurrency. We’ve seen, companies line up to make, quote, contributions to the ballroom. We have seen essentially pardons for sale. Even the money paid to the Trump Library seems to have disappeared, and now we learn that the Venezuelan money oil is going into some foreign account. You have a lot of experience in rooting out, corruption. What would you do in Congress and, have Republicans simply turned a blind eye to the theft of billions of dollars?
Paige Cognetti
Congress has abdicated nearly all of its responsibilities in these last 14 months. I mean, we don’t see them batting an eyelash that they weren’t consulted when the president went to war. The cuts that Doge made, I mean, were just… the things that they were doing were so irresponsible, and Congress did not do anything. It’s no surprise that it’s the same thing here, and we have our own case in northeastern Pennsylvania, right? We have Rob Bresnahan, who gets into office and says, well, I think I’ll start trading stocks on my votes, and he’s been having a great time, it seems. I think he’s over $8.5 million of equities that he has traded. So you see the behavior, you know, really repeating itself at the local level, and folks think. That it’s okay to make money in these offices. the people of Northeastern Pennsylvania are here to tell you that is not okay, and we will continue to be talking about that with our own local example of somebody who is flying around the district on a helicopter while people are literally trying to figure out how they’re going to put a meal on the table.
Jen Rubin
Your district and your state are the ultimate swing, voting, constituents. As you go out, what are you hearing from independents and even Republicans? Are they open to a change? Do they like what Bresnahan is doing? Do they like what Trump is doing?
Paige Cognetti
Resnihan’s stock trading is very much on people’s minds. It’s been clear from the jump that that is what he is focused on. And the cuts to healthcare, the Republicans might think that those won’t hit until 2027. That would be wrong. I mean, I mentioned the number of people that are no longer on healthcare, but these cuts… Meals on Wheels is an example. Meals on Wheels Medicaid subsidy already went from $6 to $4 in Scranton. That’s $2 less that they have to feed seniors in our city. These are things that have a material impact on people. We have a hospital in one of our rural counties, Wayne County, that just announced overnight a couple weeks ago, that they can no longer sustain their level 4 trauma unit. These changes are happening already, they are scary, and they don’t impact just Democrats or just Republicans, right? The ER is the ER. the hospital is the hospital, and folks are really concerned. We also have a big data center issue here in northeastern Pennsylvania. That is another very much cross-partisan issue. People wanting to protect their quality of life and that of their neighbors.
Jen Rubin
Well, it is a critical race that you are in. The Democrats have a big chance to sweep, and switch the House control, but, they have to win your district. Would you tell people who want to get involved, or want to know more about you, or about the race?
Paige Cognetti
Yeah, so since we last talked, Jen, I’ve gotten Governor Shapiro’s endorsement. We’ve got the DCCC’s red to blue list, we made the first list of 12. We also have no primary. Last week, we had petitions, finalized in Pennsylvania. There’s no primary, so we are full steam ahead, looking at to flip this seat in November, so you can go to pageforpa.com. to contribute, to sign up to volunteer. We have a great group, a great team, and it’s a really beautiful district full of people that just want good representation.
Jen Rubin
Well, congratulations on those successes, and we will look forward to following the race. Folks, this is one of those races that if you want to see the House control switch, you’re gonna have to win right there. Thanks so much, lovely to see you again, Paige, and we’ll be checking back in, I’m sure, before the election.
Paige Cognetti
Thanks, Jen.
