Rep. Charlie Dent (R)

The congressman from the 15th District is Charlie Dent, a Republican elected in 2004. Dent grew up in Allentown, graduated from Penn State University and got a graduate degree at Lehigh, where he later worked as a development officer. In 1990, he was elected to the state House and in 1998 to the state Senate. When Republican Rep. Pat Toomey announced that he would run against Sen. Arlen Specter in the 2004 Republican primary, Dent was the front-runner to succeed him. Dent’s lifelong residence in the Lehigh Valley was in sharp contrast to the background of the Democratic nominee, businessman Joe Driscoll. Driscoll grew up in Massachusetts, where he went sailing with the Kennedys and made enough money to spend $2 million on this race. But he lived for years in posh Lower Merion Township in Montgomery County, just outside Philadelphia. He bought a townhouse in Upper Macungie Township to run for the seat, though his wife and children continued living outside the district.

Dent framed the campaign as a contest between a native son and a carpetbagging outsider who thought of the Lehigh Valley as “a speed bump on his way to Congress.” Driscoll sought to deflect the residency issue with aggressive criticism of the Bush administration, asserting that a vote for Dent was an endorsement of Bush’s by then unpopular policies. Dent’s moderate record, which included support for abortion rights, made it difficult to tie him to Bush, and he insisted he would be an independent voice in Washington. Dent won 59%-39%. A few weeks after the election, Driscoll’s real estate agent said that he put his townhouse here up for sale and moved back to Lower Merion Township.

In the House, Dent has a mostly centrist voting record. With a seat on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, he worked to deliver local spending projects, in contrast to Toomey, who considered congressional earmarks a waste of taxpayer money. Dent supported more federal funding for embryonic-stem-cell research, which uses surplus embryos from in vitro fertilization. He opposed Bush’s plan for partial “privatization” of Social Security, and he was a last-minute supporter of the Central American Free Trade Agreement. Dent initially voiced skepticism about Bush’s troop “surge” in Iraq, but he voted against the House Democrats’ resolution to oppose the surge.

On the Homeland Security Committee, Dent pushed a bill to use the Civil Air Patrol to prevent illegal crossings at the border. And he has introduced a bill to deport illegal immigrants convicted of crimes in the United States. In October 2007, he was one of 44 Republicans who voted to override Bush’s veto of the Democrats’ expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. In February 2009, President Barack Obama invited Dent and his family to the White House to watch the Super Bowl, with the hope of getting his vote on his economic stimulus bill. But Dent said the bill cost too much and voted no. In 2009, Dent was appointed to the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct.

Democrats tried, but failed, to find a credible opponent to Dent in 2006. Northampton County Councilman Charles Dertinger got on the ballot as a write-in candidate, and made lots of noise criticizing Dent for Bush’s policies and “the culture of corruption.” Dent won by a surprisingly narrow 54%-43%. In 2008, Democrats nominated Siobhan “Sam” Bennett, who ran an Allentown charity. She spent $950,000, but lost to Dent 59%-41%.