A popular and polarizing Democratic congresswoman is staking her reelection bid on her record in a midterm election seen by many as a referendum on President Donald Trump.
While Beltway experts say this year’s race in Pennsylvania’s 12th District is Rep. Summer Lee’s to lose, the progressive firebrand from Swissvale also faces four candidates hoping to help her do just that. They include an ideological challenger in her own party and two GOP pols vying to run in November.
Democrat Adam Forgie, a small-town mayor from the Mon Valley, frames his primary challenge against the incumbent in stark terms. The middle-school history teacher criticizes Lee for focusing on national ambition at the expense of local service.
He also cites wedge issues — such as supporting Israel and backing Nippon Steel’s $14.9 billion takeover of U.S. Steel — promoting himself as the moderate yin to Lee’s progressive yang.
Lee and Forgie are joined on the spring ballot by William Parker, an app developer who previously launched low-budget bids to become Allegheny County executive, Pittsburgh mayor and U.S. senator.
Republicans, too, have a primary contest May 19.
One GOP candidate calls himself a conservative inspired to run in a cantankerous political era after the killing of Charlie Kirk. His opponent, who unsuccessfully ran to unseat Lee in 2024, uses words like “consensus” and stresses the importance of reaching across the political aisle.
All four challengers will face David-and-Goliath odds when they take on Lee, whose bid for a third term is buttressed by a fundraising behemoth that has raked in millions in donations over the past four years.
Lee’s status in Washington also won’t do Forgie or the Republicans any favors, political commentator Joe Mistick said.
“It’s hard to make a dent in this media market in a day when there’s always headlines coming out of (Washington) D.C.,” Mistick said. “It’s really tough to break through that noise in a congressional race, especially when all the air is being taken out of the room by Trump.”
Is Summer Lee beatable?
Experts are hesitant to call Lee’s reelection bid a Pittsburgh race.
Pennsylvania’s 12th District is more ensemble-cast than one-man show, they say. It includes much of Pittsburgh, but the region’s 750,000 registered voters stretch from South Hills suburb Bethel Park to East End outpost Monroeville to tiny and more rural Westmoreland County hamlets like Irwin, whose population doesn’t top 4,000.
Because Democrats hold a 2-to-1 voter-registration edge in Allegheny County, much of which falls in PA-12, the odds are slim that Lee’s seat flips red, according to Shippensburg University’s Alison Dagnes.
“If this is a safe-Democratic seat, then the real fight is going to be in the primary,” said Dagnes, who chairs the Harrisburg-area school’s political science department. “And the real fight is going to be ideological, as is the case in a lot of Democratic races these days.”
Dagnes and others think voter frustration with Trump in one of the most swing-prone of swing states could help Lee.
Last year didn’t help the president, she added. Some anticipate a “blue wave” at the polls this November in light of Democratic gains last year. In addition to Democratic ballot-box wins for New York City’s mayor and governors in New Jersey and Virginia, Democrats also dominated the landscape in the Pittsburgh area.
Without counting races where candidates filed to run on both tickets, Democrats last year swept more than 82% of nearly 500 municipal contests in Allegheny County.
Just two of every five Pennsylvania voters approved of the president in a statewide poll last month.
Lee , the first Black woman elected to represent Pennsylvania in Washington, D.C., also finds herself in a unique political position: an incumbent who’s not viewed as complicit with government bureaucracies.
“She knows what she’s doing, but she hasn’t been there for a billion years,” Dagnes said. “And that’s really a sweet spot.”
‘The Squad’ connection
Lee, 38, who grew up in North Braddock and lives in Swissvale, maintains politicians need new tactics to push back against encroaching authoritarianism.
An extended member of The Squad — the hard-left congressional alliance featuring outspoken U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, or “AOC” — Lee has worked before to match her bark with her bite. She subpoenaed Trump’s Department of Justice to release unredacted Epstein files and worked to force Elon Musk to address the alleged misuse of government data by Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.
Last month, she joined protests in Pittsburgh against Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents amid mounting unrest in Minneapolis.
“What we’re facing is so unprecedented, we can’t approach it in the ways we have in the past,” Lee said. “Everyday people want to have an equal voice in the government. And you can’t have that when Elon Musk is buying a seat in the Oval Office.”
The former state representative, who served in Harrisburg from 2019 to 2022, said she’s tackled big issues while staying in tune with what’s important to Pennsylvanians.
She’s helped secure hundreds of millions of dollars to construct new train lines, expand Pittsburgh Regional Transit services, and remedy the infamous “bathtub” on the Parkway East, according to campaign materials.
Lee also touts the pork-barrel federal funds she’s routed back home — $2.7 billion in four years.
Challengers
Lee’s challengers range in age, experience and approach.
Forgie, 48, said he’s dedicated himself to community service for as long as he can remember. A longtime middle-school history teacher, the father of two started volunteering as a firefighter at age 18.
He served as a U.S. Army reservist and was first elected Turtle Creek’s mayor at age 27. His fourth term started in January.
Parker, 44, from Pittsburgh’s East Liberty neighborhood, said he’s running to boost investment in small businesses and fight for economic justice. Parker also champions unorthodox policies, such as requiring NFL teams who net government subsidies for stadiums to allow fans to vote for their team’s head coach.
GOP candidate James Hayes, 64, of Shadyside worked for many years in economics, including a six-year stint with the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.
A self-described “social and economic conservative,”
“Sept. 10, 2025, that day Charlie Kirk was killed, was really what motivated me to get into this race,” said Fechter, 24, an Upper St. Clair resident who owns a painting business. “We are not going to allow the political violence to silence the conservative movement.”
Each of the challengers told TribLive they differ from Lee on key issues with national and global implications.
Centrists Forgie and Hayes are staunch advocates for Israel. They both say their support for the Middle Eastern nation goes hand-in-hand with battling antisemitism against Pittsburgh Jews — the second-largest Jewish community in the state.
Forgie split with many area Democrats — and then-President Joe Biden — by joining to drum up support for a Nippon Steel-U.S. Steel deal that he believes will create jobs in the Mon Valley. Hayes echoed the sentiment.
Fechter champions policies he said will make it easier for working families — and not corporations or absentee landlords — to buy single-family homes. Hayes said he’s a vocal supporter of Americans’ Second Amendment right to bear arms.
A former teachers union president, Forgie said he opposes “Right to Work” legislation and backed union journalists in their yearslong strike at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Multiple challengers stressed tone is sometimes as important as a policy stance.
“I think the biggest threat to us right now is division — our country was founded on compromise and polarization brings stagnation,” Forgie said. “(Divisiveness) doesn’t get results. It just breeds more hate. And people want results.”
Hayes said members of Congress harbor a responsibility to remain resolute — but also civil.
“Take a look around—and let’s build something better together,” he proclaims on his website.
“I carve my own path,” Hayes said. “But, on the other hand, I believe in our democracy. And in our democracy, we reach decisions by consensus.”
Both Hayes and Fechter criticize “open borders” policies, which Hayes says swell domestic workforce numbers and drive down wages for working Americans — even in places as far removed from the United States’ southern border as Pittsburgh. Fechter said immigration policy can negatively affect Pittsburgh’s housing market.
Both Republicans defended Trump and stress they would not triangulate their political beliefs based on the year an election was taking place.
Fechter also minces few words about his primary opponent, saying Hayes, who drew 42% of the vote in the 2024 race, “was treated as irrelevant.”
The Associated Press called the 2024 race for Lee just 12 minutes after polls closed.
“If we want to beat Summer Lee, it’s not going to be with him,” Fechter said. “We need somebody who actually has a chance to win. And he showed last time he wasn’t the man to do it.”
“I’m referring to Summer Lee as ‘Bummer Lee,’ ” Parker, the Democratic challenger, added. “I think she’s more about rhetoric than she is about resources.”
Various supporters
Several voters already have gravitated to their PA-12 candidate of choice.
Bob Macey, a Democrat who served on Allegheny County Council from 2006 to 2025, turned out to a Forgie campaign event last month to back the candidate.
Like Forgie, Macey supported the deal between U.S. Steel and Japan’s Nippon Steel and feels it could reinvigorate the Mon Valley.
“I think it’s very important that you look at principles over personalities,” Macey, 77, of West Mifflin said. “In the 12th district, I think it’s time for a change.”
Bethel Park voter Kevin Sheahen agrees it’s time for a change — but he wants to see a different party in charge. The retired engineer, who moved to the borough in 1986, said Lee’s positions — particularly on foreign issues like the war in Gaza — have rubbed him the wrong way.
Sheahan voted for Trump six times — in primaries and general elections in 2016, 2020 and 2024 — and sees Hayes’ fiscal conservatism as an extension of the president’s work.
“What James has talked about that really resonates for me is energy dominance,” said Sheahan, 71, who said politicians need to supercharge work being done at places like Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory in West Mifflin. “Nuclear power plants are the wave of the future.”
Political committees are remaining somewhat neutral — for now.
The Allegheny County Democratic Committee’s chairwoman, retired attorney Kate Garfinkel, said she’ll keep mum until the party’s 2,000 elected committee members meet to endorse a PA-12 candidate in March. Jason Ritchey, head of the Republican Committee of Allegheny County and a candidate himself for lieutenant governor, was supportive of all Republicans’ efforts to seek office.
Michelle McFall, who runs the Democratic Party committee in Westmoreland County, said it’s her job “to leave the door open to any candidate.”
McFall doesn’t agree with Lee on everything. But the former high-school English teacher thinks the congresswoman is doing great work, especially on “kitchen-table issues” like the cost of living and healthcare.
Lee also is a Democrat of the moment, McFall said.
“People want to feel like they’re being heard. And I think Summer Lee has done that,” she said. “She’s a courageous leader and — I think she gets criticized for this — she does not yield. I think we’re at a point in our history where that courage will be remembered.”
Fundraising
Others stress the election is less about blue or red than green.
Lee maintains a commanding fundraising lead over all those challenging her. She raised $1.13 million last year for her third congressional run — 50 times as much as Forgie, the second-highest fundraiser at $26,000 — campaign finance reports show.
In 2024, Lee amassed a nearly $3 million war chest when she defeated primary challenger Bhavini Patel.
Fechter raised $17,000 last year to fuel his first political campaign; Hayes, around $10,000.
Dagnes, the political scientist, called Lee’s fundraising lead “astonishing.”
“The incumbency advantage is massive here,” Dagnes said. “Yes, all politics are local … but, unless you have a national name for yourself, your climb is far more uphill.”
Several groups have criticized Lee for her response to the war in Gaza, which followed the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks that left 1,200 dead and dozens of Israelis taken hostage in the largest killing of Jews since the Holocaust.
More than 70,000 Palestinians were reported dead in the war that followed, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
Lee has called Hamas’ acts “horrifying and unjustifiable” but said lawmakers needed to do more to acknowledge the war’s impact on Palestinians, United Nations humanitarian aid workers, journalists and others. She voted against a pro-Israel resolution in Congress three weeks after the 2023 attacks.
“I’ve always been clear: I am against antisemitism and racism in all its forms,” Lee said recently. “I am committed to building a world that grants human rights, dignity and justice to all people. AIPAC does not share this goal.”
In 2022, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, and an affiliated super PAC spent heavily against Lee. The group did not contribute to topple Lee two years later — and has yet to directly support any candidate in this year’s race.
Jason Richey, the GOP committee chairman in Allegheny County, says money will weigh on voters this year in a different way. A strong U.S. economy — driven by record highs in the stock market and recent interest-rate drops — will accentuate the highlights of Trump’s second-term performance as Americans enter the polls.
“I know historically, in the mid-terms, the party that’s in the White House doesn’t do as well,” Richey said. “But I think there’s a good chance this year could go against history.”