Fitzpatrick, Finello Vie For 1st District Congress Seat

BUCKS COUNTY, PA — The 2020 election for the U.S. House seat representing Bucks County features an incumbent Republican staking his claim as an independent in the age of Trump versus a Democratic challenger hoping to harness a blue wave that's washed into traditionally GOP-friendly territory.

U.S. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, who is completing his second term in Congress, faces Ivyland Borough Councilwoman Christina Finello in the Nov. 3 election for Pennsylvania's 1st Congressional District seat.

The race has been tagged as one to watch by national political types as a potential Republican-to-Democrat flip. It is one of six Republican-held seats in Congress that represent districts carried by Democrat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election.

Two years ago, Fitzpatrick defeated Democratic challenger Scott Wallace by a vote of 168,841 to 160,098. But, in that same election, Democrats took control of the Bucks County Board of Commissioners, flipped multiple row offices that had long been held by the GOP and took control in a handful of Bucks boroughs and townships.

Fitzpatrick, 46, of Middletown, is seeking a third term representing Bucks and a sliver of Montgomery County. He follows in the footsteps of his brother, Mike Fitzpatrick, who represented a similarly drawn district in Congress before retiring to battle lymphoma, which took his life in January.

The former FBI agent has highlighted his public service while working to establish himself as an independent voice in an increasingly partisan political world. While he has toed the GOP line on issues like abortion rights and President Donald Trump's impeachment, he has split with the party to support some gun-safety bills, same sex marriage and civil protections based on sexual orientation.

He voted against a Republican-led effort to dismantle the Affordable Care Act (still called Obamacare by some) but supported a Trump-backed tax plan that critics like Finello say endangered the law.

His campaign has trumped his independent bona fides in the general election, after he successfully fended off a challenge from the right by Bucks County businessman Andrew Meehan in the Republican primary.

"I've made it my mission to take on a broken and dysfunctional Washington," Fitzpatrick told Patch. "On my very first day in office, I introduced a bold and sweeping government reform package to challenge the career politicians, impose term limits and abolish congressional pensions for members of Congress. In order to truly fix the system, we must build bridges, restore people's faith in the system and bring America together."

He faces Finello, a fifth-generation Pennsylvanian who was born in Bristol, raised in Warminster and now lives in Ivyland with her husband and two daughters.

Finello, 44, is an Ivyland Borough Council member and former deputy director of the Bucks County Division of Housing and Human Services.

She has sounded traditional Democratic themes during the race, including improving the Affordable Care Act to lower the cost of premiums and prescriptions, making college more affordable and tackling the climate crisis.

"Growing up in a working-class family in Bucks County, I know the struggles that our community is facing ... , Finello said to Patch. "We deserve to have a representative in Congress who puts the needs of the district before corporate special interests and the Trump agenda."

Polling in the race, has swung fairly dramatically, making it hard to know exactly where the minds of 1st District voters are leading into the Nov. 3 election.

Immediately after the June primaries, Finello's camp celebrated a handful of polls that showed the race a statistical dead heat. But in the summer months, Fitzpatrick's campaign rolled out poll after poll that showed him with a comfortable, double-digit lead.

That was the trend until October, when a pair of polls rolled out showing Fitzpatrick either holding a narrow, two-point lead or even trailing Finello by a single point (both within the polls' margins of error).

As of Thursday, political analyst Larry Sabato was listing the race in the "Leans Republican" category.

What is certain is that the race has drawn big money into the district.

At the last campaign finance filing deadline, both Fitzpatrick and Finello reported bringing in more than $900,000 over the past few months. The figures reported by both campaigns for the July 1-Sept. 30 period broke fundraising records in the district.

As of the deadline, Finello's campaign had raised a shade over $1.4 million, according to Federal Election Commission filings. She'd spent just under $900,000 of that, leaving about $555,000 for the remainder of the race.

Fitzpatrick, meanwhile, had hauled in a whopping $3.7 million for his re-election campaign. He'd spent $2.4 million as of Sept. 30, leaving him in position to spend another $1.3 million before Election Day.

The big bucks allowed Fitzpatrick to flood the TV airwaves, as well as the Web, with ads during the campaign. They were a mix of positive ads positioning Fitzpatrick as an independent-minded moderate and negative attacks on Finello, casting her as a radical out of touch with the district's views.

Finello had less to spend on ads, but countered with some of her own, highlighting her role as a mother and hard-working Bucks County native while blasting Fitzpatrick for times he has supported President Trump, tying him to some of Trump's less-popular efforts.