Democrat Carol Obando-Derstine today launched a campaign for the House in Pennsylvania’s 7th District, where freshman Rep. Ryan Mackenzie, R-Penn., narrowly won last year, flipping a Democratic-held district into the GOP’s column.
“I’m running because I don’t want to stand by as Elon Musk and Ryan Mackenzie rip away health care from millions of people, devastate our economy and take food off families tables to hand out tax cuts to billionaire donors,” Obando-Derstine told NBC News.
“I’m running for Congress to fight back, to fight for working families like the one I grew up with, and to ensure that the people of this district, of PA-7, know they have a champion in office who will always put them before politics,” she added.
Obando-Derstine is a naturalized citizen from Colombia who has worked in various community-facing roles in the Lehigh Valley, including as an energy engineer and as an aide to former Sen. Bob Casey.
Though she’s never held elected office, Obando-Derstine cited that as an asset, saying, “There’s momentum around candidates like me. Right now, we have someone who isn’t showing up for our district, and more career politicians won’t change that.”
“This is the change that voters want to see, and that’s what I’m going to channel into this primary. I dedicated my life to helping people in this region. I haven’t dedicated my life to politics,” she added.
The general election in Pennsylvania’s 7th District is expected to be close, with the nonpartisan Cook Political Report rating the race as a “Toss-up” and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee listing the race as one of their targets for 2026. Mackenzie only won the race by 1 percentage point, or just over 4,000 votes, in 2024.
Former Rep. Susan Wild, D-Pa., who represented the district but lost to Mackenzie in 2024, is expected to endorse Obando-Derstine later today.
In a statement, Mackenzie’s campaign spokesperson, Arnaud Armstrong, tied Obando-Derstine to Wild, saying that electing Obando-Derstine would effectively be “a fourth Wild term.”
“Susan Wild’s stated goal was finding someone with ‘no record’ so they could make up an image to fool voters. The sad truth that has been exposed is that Obondo-Derstine is running to carry on Wild’s radical left agenda that caused the worst inflation in decades, disastrous open-border policies, failed foreign policy, and woke mandates,” Armstrong said. “Voters will reject this poorly veiled attempt by Wild’s special interest backers and consultants to obtain a fourth Wild term and all of the far-left policies that would accompany it.”