The new congressman from the 11th District is Republican Lou Barletta, who toppled 13-term Democrat Paul Kanjorski in 2010 by portraying him as a politician who “has overstayed his welcome” in Congress. Read More

The new congressman from the 11th District is Republican Lou Barletta, who toppled 13-term Democrat Paul Kanjorski in 2010 by portraying him as a politician who “has overstayed his welcome” in Congress.

Barletta hails from Hazleton, Pa., where he was mayor from 2000 to 2010. From a young age, he worked with his parents and three brothers in his family’s businesses: A. Barletta and Sons Road Construction and Barletta Heating Oil. After graduating from Hazleton High School, he attended Bloomsburg University, but he left early to follow a dream of becoming a professional baseball player. After an unsuccessful tryout with the Cincinnati Reds, he returned to Hazleton. He married and started a family, and in the 1980s he and his wife, Mary Grace Barletta, opened a pavement-marking business. In 1998, Barletta was elected to the Hazleton City Council, and two years later became mayor. He inherited a budget shortfall and helped return the city to financial solvency. In 2006, Barletta made national news when he signed a law allowing the city to deny business permits to employers who hired illegal immigrants and to fine landlords for renting to noncitizens. The following year, a federal District Court judge struck down the law, and it has been contested in the courts since.

Barletta first challenged Kanjorski in 2002. He lost, but he maintained ties to national Republicans. In 2004, the Bush White House appointed him to the United Nations Advisory Committee on Local Authorities, and two years later, the Republican National Committee tapped Barletta to work on outreach to Catholics. He lost to Kanjorski again in 2008 but kept the outcome close, 52% to 48%.

He came back two years later, this time with ads that characterized Kanjorski as a “couch potato” and asked, “Know a guy who wears out his welcome? Paul Kanjorski has just been around too long. Long enough to get 10 pay raises and raise taxes 150 times.” The Kanjorski campaign appealed to the district’s many senior citizens with ads accusing Barletta of supporting the privatization of Social Security, though Barletta came out against private Social Security accounts. Kanjorski’s ads warned, “The Barletta campaign sends an offensive message to the thousands of area seniors: Get out of the way because your time may have passed.”

Kanjorski raised more money, $1.9 million compared with Barletta’s $1.3 million. But the Republican tide of 2010 provided Barletta with just enough lift to beat Kanjorski, 55% to 45%.