The new congressman from the 8th District is Mike Fitzpatrick, a Republican elected in 2004, defeated in 2006, and elected again in 2010. Fitzpatrick grew up in Bucks County’s Levittown, one of seven children. He was an Eagle Scout and graduated from St. Thomas University and Dickinson School of Law at Penn State University. From 1994 to 2004, he served on the Bucks County Commission, where he worked on land preservation and had a reputation for supporting environmental causes. The House seat first came open when Rep. Jim Greenwood, a moderate Republican, announced in July 2004 that he would not seek re-election after accepting an offer to head of the Biotechnology Industry Organization. However, Greenwood had already won the Republican primary, so local Republican leaders chose Fitzpatrick to replace him on the general election ballot. He went on to win 55%-43%. In the House, he sponsored a successful bill requiring schools and libraries to restrict minors’ access to social networking sites and chat rooms. Read More

The new congressman from the 8th District is Mike Fitzpatrick, a Republican elected in 2004, defeated in 2006, and elected again in 2010. Fitzpatrick grew up in Bucks County’s Levittown, one of seven children. He was an Eagle Scout and graduated from St. Thomas University and Dickinson School of Law at Penn State University. From 1994 to 2004, he served on the Bucks County Commission, where he worked on land preservation and had a reputation for supporting environmental causes. The House seat first came open when Rep. Jim Greenwood, a moderate Republican, announced in July 2004 that he would not seek re-election after accepting an offer to head of the Biotechnology Industry Organization. However, Greenwood had already won the Republican primary, so local Republican leaders chose Fitzpatrick to replace him on the general election ballot. He went on to win 55%-43%. In the House, he sponsored a successful bill requiring schools and libraries to restrict minors’ access to social networking sites and chat rooms.

In 2006, Fitzpatrick was challenged by Democrat Patrick Murphy, the son of a Philadelphia policeman and an Army lawyer and Iraq war veteran. Murphy favored an end to the war at a time antiwar sentiments were running high. Fitzpatrick tried to distance himself from the Bush administration’s policies in Iraq. When Fitzpatrick ran an ad questioning Murphy’s claim that he had worked as a Justice Department prosecutor, Murphy declared at a forum, “Mike, you are a liar and a coward.” Murphy won 50.3%-49.7%, with a popular vote margin of 1,518 votes out of almost 250,000 votes cast. Fitzpatrick returned to private law practice. He was later diagnosed with colon cancer; after treatment, doctors gave him a clean bill of health in 2010.

That year was shaping up to be a favorable political climate for Republicans, and Fitzpatrick decided to try to get the seat back. In the GOP primary, Fitzpatrick had three opponents and was viewed as the establishment candidate, endorsed by The Philadelphia Inquirer. He was embarrassed, however, by a comment he made about primary opponent Gloria Carlineo, whom he called an “immigrant,” even though she hails from Puerto Rico. Fitzpatrick later said he meant the comment as a compliment in the sense that she is living the American dream. Fitzpatrick won the primary with 77% of the vote.

In the general election, Fitzpatrick emphasized not the environmental issues he had in the past, but his opposition to the Obama administration. “Cash for clunkers, Obamacare, stimulus—no jobs. We’ve wasted a lot of money in the last few years,” he told The New York Times. Like many Democrats in 2010, Murphy emphasized his support for allowing the Bush-era tax cuts to expire for high-income earners while extending them for other taxpayers. Murphy also attacked Fitzpatrick for “Fitzflops”—formerly co-sponsoring and now opposing a bill making it easier to organize labor unions, and formerly bragging of being one of the House’s most liberal Republicans but now campaigning as a tea partier.

Murphy was a favorite of many Democratic insiders who hoped that, at age 37, he might someday be a statewide candidate. He had also raised his profile as the leader in the House effort to repeal the ban on openly gay service personnel in the military. Murphy spent $4.3 million, more than twice the $2 million Fitzpatrick spent. Nonetheless Fitzpatrick won by a decisive 54%-46%. After the election, he told the Bucks County Courier Times, “This election was a referendum on President Obama’s handling of the economy and it was also a referendum on Pat Murphy because Murphy is Obama.”