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Posted on 08/11/2026 5:57:15 AM PDT by lightman

Rep. Scott Perry opened up the home stretch of his re-election campaign taking dead aim at progressive Democrats he says will ruin America.

Never mind that Janelle Stelson, his opponent in Pennsylvania’s 10th District House race, has consistently portrayed herself as a centrist, more comfortable with the political middle than the extremes.

Perry, at a rally of Cumberland County Republicans at a Hampden Township restaurant Monday night, said Stelson, if elected to a new Democratic majority in the House, would be no more than a cog in a very dangerous machine.

“These crazy people that are running (on the Democratic left) that want to confiscate your property, that want to make Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C. a state, that want to pack the (Supreme) court, that want to have a wealth tax?

“Those are the people that are going to be calling the shots,“ Perry said Monday. ”And she (Stelson) is going to be doing what she’s told, believe me.”

Stelson’s campaign pushed back hard on Perry’s assessment when reached by PennLive Monday night.

“Janelle Stelson will oppose terrible ideas from socialists - like open borders and defunding the police - with just as much vigor as she opposes many terrible ideas from Congressman Perry - including his opposition to the new bipartisan affordable housing bill, and his support for a national abortion ban,” campaign manager Alma Baker said.

Perry was joined by House colleague Anna Paulina Luna, a Florida Republican who garnered attention this year for helping lead the effort to oust two House members - California Democrat Eric Swalwell and Texas Republican Tony Gonzales - from office based on allegations of sexual misconduct.

Luna is now working on, among other things, trying to force disclosure of House accounts she says have been used to settle sexual harassments claims lodged against members.

Perry has been a true ally in that and other fights, Luna said, adding she cannot say the same about all of her colleagues.

“I’m tired of members of Congress going to Washington promising to fight for things, only to turn around when things get tough and stab their own constituents and the American people in the back,” Luna said.

“That is not who this man is. He will fight for you. He will be in the trenches with us, and we need him to get re-elected.”

After those opening remarks, Perry opened the floor to his supporters for a spirited Q&A session that covered topics ranging from data centers and the international race to harness artificial intelligence to the last month’s House vote on a bill banning personal stock trading by members of Congress.

Stock trading ban

Perry and Luna both highlighted their support for the stock trading ban passed by the House, and called on the Senate to take up the bill so it can get to President Donald J. Trump’s desk.

During a press gaggle after the rally, the pair were asked if they felt Congress should also tighten rules on the president’s ability to profit from office, in light of recent financial disclosures that President Trump personally reported more than $2 billion in earnings from cryptocurrency, memecoin and other investments in 2025.

Trump has said he is hands-off on his family’s business interests, but his administration is also very directly involved in setting formative government policy in the crypto arena.

Perry said Monday he and Luna could only vote on the bill that made the House calendar.

“All the bills that I have signed on to have been bipartisan, and some of them included the executive branch and I was okay with that, too,” Perry said.

“We both fought for multiple bills, and this is the one that was available to us, and we fought hard to get it on the floor and it passed.”

Perry also stressed he’s always put his money where his mouth is on the issue.

“I don’t own one stock. I never have,” Perry said.

“I told my wife when we decided that I would run for office, it’s about serving. I’m never going to have my constituents wonder whether I voted for something so that I could pad my own checkbook. And I’ve lived that.”

Data centers

Perry, like a lot of politicians in 2026, walked a fine line on the data center issue, arguing the United States does need enough hyperscale facilities to ensure it leads China in the development of artificial intelligence tools.

But he also said the campuses need to be sited in the right places, and they need to built in a way that protects the local environment and host communities.

In the end, Perry expressed confidence that, with appropriate oversight by state and local officials, that can be done.

“This is the United States of America. We can do it better, more cleanly than anybody else on the planet. And we should demand that, right? But we should not take a back seat to China... because whichever country wins will bury the other country because the other country can never catch up.”

He also advanced an argument that rising electricity costs lay mostly at the hands of liberal Democrats’ “green agenda... This is all being done because they want you to have windmills and solar and nothing else is allowed,” Perry said.

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro - an avowed all-of-the-above energy supporter - has rejected that characterization, blaming regional power grid monitor PJM for moving too slowly in bringing new power sources online.

Election security

Perry and Luna, to cheers Monday night, also doubled down on their support for Trump’s election reform bill that would require documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote, and voter ID at the polls.

Critics have argued the bill throws up new barriers that will disproportionately harm low-income and non-English speaking voters.

But Perry said the current system is essentially an honor system in an world where not all people are honorable.

“There are people that will lie, and there are people that will cheat. And so we can’t use the honor system on our elections any more than we use the honor system on anything else that requires people to follow the law,” Perry said.

Perry, of course, has drawn fierce national scrutiny for his role as one of the top Congressional supporters of Trump’s election subversion efforts in 2020.

Perry, seeking an eighth term in the House, and Stelson are facing off in a rematch of one of the closest House races in the nation from 2024.

This year, it has been classified by Cook’s Political Report as one of just 19 toss-up races out of 435 nationwide.

The 10th District is comprised of all of Dauphin County, most of Cumberland County and the roughly the northern half of York County.

1 posted on 08/11/2026 5:57:15 AM PDT by lightman

To: fatima; Fresh Wind; st.eqed; xsmommy; House Atreides; Nowhere Man; PaulZe; brityank; Physicist; ...

2 posted on 08/11/2026 5:59:49 AM PDT by lightman (Beat the Philly fraud machine the Amish did onest, ja? Nein, zweimal they did already!)

To: lightman

3 posted on 08/11/2026 6:23:13 AM PDT by frank ballenger (There's a battle outside and it's raging. It'll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls. )

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