Public Servant in Name Only: Rob Bresnahan Hardly Alone

Having closely followed Pennsylvania politics over the past decade, particularly when interviewing a number of incoming members of Congress from the so-called class of 2018, I found it interesting to watch Congressman Matt Cartwright consistently hold onto his Northeastern Pennsylvania congressional district, even as it increasingly shifted to the Right in the Trump era. Election after election, the Democratic representative survived. Then came 2024, when Congressman Cartwright was finally defeated by a 34-year-old businessman and University of Scranton graduate named Rob Bresnahan.

His grandfather had founded an electrical contracting company, Kuharchik Construction, of which the future lawmaker became an executive at the age of 19. In addition to later serving as CEO of the family business, Bresnahan also became a real estate investor in Pittston and served on a number of boards and community organizations prior to announcing his challenge to Congressman Cartwright, which was his first run for public office. 

I recall watching his debate with Congressman Cartwright and being struck by Bresnahan’s proclamation that he would never live anywhere but northeastern Pennsylvania, “I was born in Northeastern Pennsylvania. I was raised in Northeastern Pennsylvania…I’m going to die and get buried in Northeastern Pennsylvania,” he declared. Pundits are often fond of saying that Pennsylvania is a provincial place, and insofar as that is true, Bresnahan promised he was one of their own.

When he did win and first arrived in the House chamber, I remember watching him hug Congressman Dan Meuser and other members of the Pennsylvania congressional delegation, likely still in disbelief that here he was in his early to mid-30s serving in a body as prestigious as that of the United States House of Representatives—without even a stopover in the state legislature having been required along the way. This was early 2025; optimism was in the air, with President Trump’s golden age of America allegedly set to begin. And the people of Pennsylvania’s eighth congressional district were finally about to be represented by someone who more closely held their political views. 

But then reports began increasingly to emerge that this young man, already with an estimated net worth of $48 million (making him easily one of the wealthier members of Congress) had become, according to The New York Times, the second most active stock trader in Congress. In November, NBC News even reported that the Republican politician had sold $130,000 worth of stocks in Medicaid-provider companies before the first vote on the House’s version of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which included approximately $900 billion in Medicaid cuts and would eventually be signed into law in July of this year. This is on top of months of hundreds of other trades, including the sale of bonds "issued by the Allegheny County Hospital Development Authority for the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center" after the Congressman may have been privy to the effect of these same Medicaid cuts on rural hospitals.

"As the cliché goes, this is why Americans hate Washington."

While the Congressman has countered that all of these trades were carried out by his financial advisor without his input (he became aware of them at the same time the public did, he has claimed), one cannot help but think: Why would a young man who has, against the odds, received the incredible opportunity to serve in one of the nation’s two federal legislative bodies not do everything in his power to avoid even the appearance that he might be trading based on privileged information? If he wanted to continue focusing on moneymaking, he ought to have remained in the private sector and allowed another qualified Republican candidate the opportunity to challenge Congressman Cartwright. 

To make matters worse, Bresnahan the candidate had frequently called for banning members of Congress from trading stocks. In a March 2024 op-ed, he began by asserting “Too often we hear about how politicians are making millions of dollars during their time in office and it is sickening,” and then argued for the necessity of banning members of Congress from trading stocks, noting that "[s]ome of the most prolific traders in the country serve in Congress." However, by the spring of 2025, only a few short months into his tenure, he was already being identified in the press as “one of the House's most prolific traders.” What a difference a few months and an election victory make.

If only this phenomenon were a rarity. On the other side of the aisle on another issue but in the same Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, I vividly recall the change in tune exhibited by Congresswoman Susan Wild, who represented Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley in Congress from 2018 to 2025. While campaigning during her first run for Congress she was adamantly opposed to accepting corporate PAC money, particularly from pharmaceutical companies, a position that I found laudable when discussing it with her as a candidate prior to her election victory.

Cue my surprise that less than one year later, when I interviewed her, she had altered her stance entirely, asserting that there was no relationship between accepting such contributions and how a member voted. "I honestly haven’t seen people’s votes be affected by their receipt of money by, for instance, Big Pharma," she told me. And, by 2022, she was accepting PAC money herself. As the cliché goes, this is why Americans hate Washington."1

To be clear, when it comes to the trading of stocks, Congressman Bresnahan is hardly the only offender. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her husband Paul have frequently been criticized for the frequent and sizable trades they have made during her decades-long tenure in Congress, even prompting a recent news story to assert that during her 37 years in Congress she notched "$130 million in stock profits" for a staggering return of nearly seventeen thousand percent. Another House Speaker, the later-disgraced Dennis Hastert, was credibly accused of profiting to the tune of millions of dollars from land purchases that increased in value due to legislation he had a hand in. And innumerable rank-and-file members have appeared to prioritize personal gain over prioritizing the interests of their constituents. 

Although he is far from alone, I find myself singling out Congressman Bresnahan because there is something so staggeringly disappointing about how quickly this young Congressman has betrayed the spirit of his campaign. At a time when so many American voters sought to send a message to Washington, D.C. that it was inept, corrupt, and overly opaque, the new member of Congress the people of Pennsylvania’s eighth congressional district sent to the capital has come to epitomize that sense of futility expressed in the Irish saying “Ireland shall get her freedom and you still break stone,” or if one prefers the sentiment sung, and from the other side of the Irish Sea, “Meet the new boss—same as the old boss.”

Erich J. Prince is the editor-in-chief of Merion West.

Endnotes

1. I often think of the line from the song “My Back Pages” about “becom[ing] my enemy.”