Who is Paige Cognetti?

Paige Cognetti is the Mayor of Scranton, Pennsylvania — the first woman ever elected to that office — and the Democratic candidate for Pennsylvania's 8th Congressional District in 2026. She holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a summa cum laude degree from the University of Oregon, and served as a Senior Advisor in the Obama administration's Treasury Department. She won her first mayoral race in 2019 as an Independent, running against the local Democratic Party machine under the slogan "Paige Against the Machine" after Scranton's sitting mayor was arrested and pleaded guilty to federal bribery, extortion, and conspiracy charges. She won re-election by a landslide in 2021 and again in 2025 on the same reform platform: make government work for the people, not for the machine. She is a DCCC Red to Blue candidate and nationally recognized as one of the top Democratic recruits of the cycle.