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Candidates › PA-15 race › 2025–2026
Ray Bilger
D Democratic nominee for U.S. House, PA-15
Has not served in Congress
No campaign site or public profiles are attached to this record yet.
- On the ballot
- On the general election ballotNov 3, 2026 · Pennsylvania US House 15
- Where to vote
- Find your polling place (opens in a new tab) · More ways to vote
- Top priorities
- Economy
- Healthcare
- Farming
- Energy
- Rural Communities
- Money
- $230.8K raised, $141.8K spent, $88.9K cash on hand (through Oct 14, 2026). Where it comes from
- Who gives
- 37% of individual money from donors at $200 or less · 89% from Pennsylvania · largest committee giver MACHINISTS NON PARTISAN POLITICAL LEAGUE OF THE INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF MACHINISTS & AEROSPACE WORKERS, $5K
- Outside groups
- $1.4K supporting, $97 opposing Bilger
- Backed by
- AFL-CIO · Carpenter's Union 423 · United Mine Workers of America and 7 more. As the campaign lists them
15 priorities from bilgerforcongress.com, in the order they are listed there. Every heading and the text under it is copied exactly, as one passage for each page it is from, and links to that place on the page; hover a source to see which passage it opens.
A strong economy isn’t measured only by the stock market or GDP. It’s measured at the kitchen table—by whether a paycheck covers the groceries, whether a family can afford a home, whether a small business can grow, and whether young people can find good jobs without leaving the communities where they grew up.
Too many families in PA-15 are working hard and still falling behind. Everyday costs have risen, good-paying jobs are harder to find in many communities, and small businesses struggle to compete against corporations with enormous economic and political power.
This district has the people, resources, and work ethic to do better.
That means creating an environment where small businesses can start, grow, and hire locally; attracting good-paying jobs in manufacturing, defense, healthcare, cybersecurity, robotics, and other industries important to America’s future; and investing in the infrastructure and workforce those employers need.
Competition matters, too. An economy dominated by monopolies leaves consumers paying more and small businesses with fewer opportunities to compete.
Fiscal responsibility is part of the equation. Taxpayer dollars should be spent wisely, with independent oversight and transparency. Congress must reclaim its constitutional authority over spending and tariffs rather than surrendering those powers to the executive branch.
Economic policy should ultimately pass a simple test: Does it make it easier for people who work hard to build a good life here?
PA-15 shouldn’t have to export its young people to find opportunity.
We should be bringing opportunity home.
source ↗ (opens the page at this passage) · bilgerforcongress.com/priorities
No one should have to choose between seeing a doctor and paying the mortgage.
Yet healthcare has become unaffordable for too many families in PA-15. Insurance premiums, prescription drugs, deductibles, and out-of-pocket costs keep rising, while rural communities are losing hospitals, maternity care, doctors, and other essential services.
For four years, enhanced tax credits through Pennsylvania’s health insurance marketplace, Pennie, helped hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvanians afford coverage. When Congress had the opportunity to extend those credits, Glenn Thompson voted no—even as members of his own party voted to preserve them.
Families in this district paid the price. Premiums soared in some PA-15 counties, and people who could no longer afford coverage were forced to give it up.
Healthcare policy should make care more affordable and more accessible, not push it further out of reach.
That means protecting affordable insurance coverage, lowering prescription drug costs, defending Medicare and Medicaid, strengthening rural hospitals and healthcare providers, and addressing the severe shortage of medical professionals in rural Pennsylvania.
It also means standing up to insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, and private-equity interests when their profits come at the expense of patients.
Where you live shouldn’t determine whether you can see a doctor. Losing a job shouldn’t mean losing access to healthcare. And getting sick shouldn’t put a family in financial crisis.
Healthcare isn’t a luxury. It’s something every family should be able to afford.
source ↗ (opens the page at this passage) · bilgerforcongress.com/priorities
Pennsylvania has lost more than 10,000 farms in the past decade. Farm bankruptcies went up 160% last year alone.
Not because farmers stopped working hard. Fertilizer is up. Fuel prices are up. John Deere decided farmers couldn’t even fix their own tractors without calling a dealer first—and paying a fee.
That 150-acre dairy farm your neighbor has been running his whole life is getting squeezed out. Another building sits empty. Another family loses what they spent generations building.
Glenn Thompson has chaired the House Agriculture Committee for the past seventeen years. He calls himself a descendant of dairy farmers. Since Thompson took the Agriculture chair in 2023, Pennsylvania has been the only major dairy state in which farm closures have increased every year. On his watch, the Farm Bill gave family farms around $1,200 a year in subsidy payments, while the top 1% walked away with nearly 100 times as much.
That’s his record.
Growing up in Bellefonte meant seeing firsthand what happens when opportunity disappears. Leaving to find work was a necessity. Coming back revealed a district where, for too many families, the same problems remain.
That’s the reason for this campaign.
The agenda in Congress is straightforward: pass the Agricultural Right to Repair Act. Protect crop insurance. Bring tariff decisions back to Congress, because farmers shouldn’t have to pay for trade wars they had no vote in.
Washington has had seventeen years to get this right.
source ↗ (opens the page at this passage) · bilgerforcongress.com/priorities
Pennsylvania is the second-largest natural gas producer in the country. That means jobs, revenue, and energy that keeps the lights on and the heat running for families across this district. The people who do that work built something real here. They deserve a congressman who recognizes it—and stands up for them.
The principle is simple: if you do business in Pennsylvania, you play by Pennsylvania’s laws. The problem isn’t the industry; it’s what happens when companies cut corners and nobody holds them accountable.
In 2025, a natural gas company contaminated drinking water in Cameron County. People who worked their entire lives to afford their homes could no longer trust what came out of their own taps. Worse, the company continued drilling even after regulators told it to stop. When corporations put profit ahead of people’s lives and livelihoods, Washington needs to stand with the people whose water was contaminated—not the corporation responsible.
Companies that use Pennsylvania’s resources to make money owe something to the communities that provide those resources. That means stronger oversight, real consequences for violations, and making sure the benefits of energy production stay here—in jobs, tax revenue, and investment.
The energy economy is changing, and PA-15 workers should be first in line for what comes next. Two-thirds of Pennsylvania’s 104,000 clean-energy workers are in construction and manufacturing—the kinds of jobs this district has always done well. Veterans make up one in ten of that workforce. Those jobs belong here. Nobody should have to leave PA-15 to find them.
Pennsylvania’s energy belongs to Pennsylvanians. Keeping it that way means protecting the workers who produce it, the communities that support it, and the families who depend on it.
source ↗ (opens the page at this passage) · bilgerforcongress.com/priorities
Rural communities in the 15th District deserve the opportunity to thrive and grow.
Without job opportunities, younger residents leave their hometowns for places where opportunity seems to exist somewhere else. That leaves an older population that needs more services, while the economic base needed to support those services continues to shrink. Telling people to simply move away ignores the deep roots that tie families to their communities—their schools, their neighbors, their families, and the places where generations have lived and worked.
Leaving rural Pennsylvania makes clear why so many young people feel they have to leave. Coming back makes equally clear how little has changed.
That’s the quiet crisis nobody in Washington talks about.
Young people leave rural America for jobs. The population ages. The need for healthcare, transportation, housing, and other services grows, while the tax base needed to pay for them gets smaller. Anyone who thinks the answer is simply for people to move away has never stood in a town where their grandparents are buried, where their children went to school, and where neighbors have known their family for generations.
This district doesn’t need to be abandoned. It needs investment.
A top priority in Congress is legislation that makes it easier to start and grow businesses right here—small manufacturers, farms, local banks, healthcare facilities, and the small commercial businesses that are the backbone of every town in this district.
The small-business incubators already working in Centre and Clearfield counties can provide a model for communities across the district.
Glenn Thompson has represented this district for more than 17 years. During that time, young people have continued to leave, and rural economies have continued to shrink.
Good intentions aren’t enough.
It’s time for someone who left, came back, and believes this place is worth fighting for.
That belief runs deep.
source ↗ (opens the page at this passage) · bilgerforcongress.com/priorities
As a gun owner and veteran, the Second Amendment is not an abstraction—it is part of a way of life and a responsibility worth protecting.
Like the nearly one million Pennsylvania hunters and gun collectors, firearms are part of life for many families across this state. Ask about the Colt Woodsman sometime.
That Second Amendment right also comes with responsibility, a value shared by the vast majority of gun owners. Background checks should work the way they are supposed to: keeping guns out of the hands of criminals and people who pose a danger to themselves or others, while never punishing law-abiding citizens for doing things right.
There is a difference between respecting the Second Amendment and simply following the NRA line.
Glenn Thompson votes the NRA line.
A gun owner and veteran can believe in the Second Amendment while also believing in common-sense gun laws.
source ↗ (opens the page at this passage) · bilgerforcongress.com/priorities
Our veterans risked their lives to defend our freedom. While we can never offer enough thanks for that sacrifice, our current system has somehow managed to offer far less.
Today, hundreds of veterans in Pennsylvania and thousands more across the country are homeless; millions face the burden of opioid addiction, dying at twice the national rate from it. Worse still, access to medical care is blocked by bureaucratic hurdles that enrich private insurers at the expense of those who served.
Enough is enough; the broken promises must end. As a veteran myself, pushing back against VA cuts that delay treatment is a priority, along with keeping private equity from standing between veterans and their care and preventing corporations from profiting by denying veterans needed care.
source ↗ (opens the page at this passage) · bilgerforcongress.com/priorities
America’s children are its future. Giving that future every opportunity to succeed requires a strong public education system—from elementary school through college. That starts with investing in educators and making sure talented, highly qualified people are encouraged to enter and remain in the teaching profession.
Thousands of schools across Pennsylvania and the nation face shortages of qualified STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) teachers. Glenn Thompson voted to cut federal grants designed to attract expert teachers to rural schools. While he claims to support education, his record shows a willingness to hollow out that support in the name of saving a few dollars.
Our communities deserve better. Expanding grants to attract and retain top teaching talent in Pennsylvania must be a priority. So must protecting the federal funding that supports critical research at Penn State and ensuring that our children have every advantage possible as they grow, learn, and prepare for the future.
A strong education system is not an expense to be minimized. It is an investment in Pennsylvania’s children, its workforce, and the future of its communities.
source ↗ (opens the page at this passage) · bilgerforcongress.com/priorities
Congress’s job should be to make everyone’s lives better—not to make wealthy donors’ lives and members’ own bank accounts better.
Most people in this district work hard, play by the rules, and trust that their representatives are doing the same. Too often, that trust is broken.
Here’s how Washington really works. Members of Congress have access to information the rest of us don’t have, creating opportunities to trade stocks while serving in office. When they finish their terms, nearly half become high-paid lobbyists, with some seeing their compensation jump by more than 1,000 percent. And thanks to Citizens United, corporations and billionaires can pour unlimited money into campaigns to help elect and keep in office the candidates they support.
The result is a Congress that too often works for its donors instead of the people it represents. This isn’t a partisan issue. It’s a corruption issue.
That’s why the priorities incorporate banning congressional stock trading—including legislation already introduced by Republican Congressman Chip Roy of Texas—closing the revolving door between Congress and K Street, and overturning Citizens United.
Reform has to start at home. A constitutional amendment limiting House members to six terms—twelve years—would bring a clear limit to congressional careers. Glenn Thompson is seeking his tenth term in 2026 after more than seventeen years in Congress.
Six terms. Twelve years. Then it’s time to go home.
It’s time for a Congress that works for the people of this district—not one that works for itself.
source ↗ (opens the page at this passage) · bilgerforcongress.com/priorities
Pennsylvania is in the middle of a data center boom. Trillion-dollar technology companies are moving into rural communities like ours, promising jobs and tax revenue while consuming millions of gallons of water from local aquifers every year. They are also driving up electricity prices for families on the grid, with capacity prices in our region already jumping by 860% in a single year.
For all that, these massive facilities create roughly 30 to 50 permanent jobs per site.
The contradiction is hard to ignore. Companies building the backbone of the internet want to locate here in Central Pennsylvania, yet 276,000 Pennsylvania households still cannot get reliable broadband. Families in PA-15 are being asked to help pay for someone else’s server farm while struggling to get a reliable internet connection at home.
Data centers can be good for PA-15—but only if the rules protect the communities that host them.
Glenn Thompson has chaired the House Agriculture Committee, which has jurisdiction over rural broadband and USDA water programs, for years. On this issue, his record is silence. No legislation. No hearings. No meaningful protections for residents.
Our communities are not sacrifice zones for Big Tech.
Thirty-five years working in and around the very infrastructure these companies are building—from the Air Force to the NSA, where serving as Technical Director for Cyber Analysis meant understanding these systems from the inside—provides a clear understanding of what these facilities need and what they owe the communities they enter.
Five federal priorities should be non-negotiable:
- Broadband co-investment as a condition of federal tax benefits.
- Mandatory Community Benefit Agreements.
- Full water-use transparency.
- Strict clean-air standards for backup generators.
- Ratepayer protections to shield families from the costs of data-center demand.
Leadership means understanding how these systems work, knowing where they fail, and having the determination to fix them by a willingness to set clear, enforceable rules.
source ↗ (opens the page at this passage) · bilgerforcongress.com/priorities
Families are choosing between groceries and rent. Kids are going to school hungry.
Glenn Thompson looked his constituents in the eye and promised—in his own words—“absolutely no reductions in nutritional benefits.”
Then he went to Washington and voted to take food off the tables of nearly 7,000 of his own constituents.
Promises made to the people of this district should mean something. A commitment made to protect nutritional benefits should be honored.
SNAP is not a handout. It’s roughly $6 a day to feed a family. It’s what keeps a laid-off mill worker fed while looking for the next job. It’s what a grandmother uses to make sure her grandchildren don’t go hungry. It’s what a veteran relies on while getting back on his feet.
Glenn Thompson voted to cut it. He voted to make Pennsylvania pay for it. And when Governor Shapiro called him out, he blamed everyone else.
Rural Pennsylvania deserves a congressman who fights for the people in this district — not one who makes promises he doesn’t keep.
source ↗ (opens the page at this passage) · bilgerforcongress.com/priorities
A lifetime spent working alongside the security and intelligence professionals who keep this country safe brings a clear understanding of what it means to follow the rules—and what it costs when those in authority do not.
But enforcement alone is not an immigration policy. America’s immigration system is broken, and both parties bear responsibility. The result is chaos—for immigrants caught in the system, for communities trying to absorb it, and for law enforcement officers asked to manage it without clear rules.
Fixing that system means securing the border, creating workable legal pathways, and clearing the backlogs that leave people in limbo for years. It also means applying a single standard of accountability to everyone.
That standard must apply to ICE and CBP agents as well. Officers doing their jobs should wear identifiable uniforms and badge numbers and comply with established use-of-force policies. No masks. No unmarked uniforms. No exceptions. When those standards are violated, independent review panels—not internal chains of command—should determine the consequences. When a U.S. citizen or immigrant dies during an enforcement action, there must be an immediate independent investigation, with charges brought where warranted.
The rule of law is not optional. The Constitution does not have a carve-out for immigration enforcement. Protecting that principle—and ensuring that those who enforce the law are accountable to it—is essential to preserving the rights and security of everyone in this country.
source ↗ (opens the page at this passage) · bilgerforcongress.com/priorities