The House primary giving hints about where the national Democratic Party is heading

2026 ElectionThe House primary giving hints about where the national Democratic Party is headingPennsylvania’s 7th District has been close to evenly split in recent general elections. This year, the Democratic primary is also sending signals about what matters to the party.Listen to this article with a free account00:0000:00Ryan Crosswell, left, and Bob Brooks are candidates for the Democratic nomination in Pennsylvania's 7th Congressional District.Matt Rourke / AP fileShareAdd NBC News to GoogleMay 17, 2026, 5:00 AM EDTBy Allan SmithBETHLEHEM, Pa. — Bob Brooks kept his message to the point in a six-minute address to union leaders and supporters on Monday. Subscribe to read this story ad-free Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content.Brooks, the head of the state firefighters union and a Democratic candidate for a battleground House seat in the Lehigh Valley, described himself as a “working-class candidate” and “working-class person” who has been working since he ran a paper route at age 10. “The whole system is rigged against us,” he said — and the only way to combat such an imbalance of power is by “sending people like us to Washington, D.C., to represent us.”Across town, Democratic rival Ryan Crosswell, a Marine veteran and former federal prosecutor whose headline-grabbing resignation from the Justice Department preceded his campaign, offered a very different message. In an interview with NBC News, he described leaving the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section — over an order to drop a corruption case against then-New York City Mayor Eric Adams — as “a real No Kings moment,” pointing to the anti-President Donald Trump protest movement.The Republican-turned-Democrat said Trump “is literally trying to write Article One out of the Constitution — that is violating the law.” He decried a “lawless” administration and explained that he tries “to tell people corruption is a kitchen-table issue” and that lawlessness and corruption have “b...