BETHLEHEM, Pa. – The Lehigh Valley's congressional seat is not the most comfortable in American politics.
Pennsylvania's 7th Congressional District has essentially come down to a coin flip in the last three elections, never being decided by more than 3 points.
The hyper-competitive district requires year-round fundraising, and challengers are already lining up to contest the seat in next year's race.
But 100 days into U.S. Rep. Ryan Mackenzie's congressional career, the freshman Republican said he's planning for the long-term even during one of the more tumultuous stretches in an era of political shakeups.
President Donald Trump is following through on his campaign promise of disrupting the status quo, slashing thousands of federal jobs, cutting government programs and contracts and initiating a trade war of historic proportions.
All the while, many constituents in Mackenzie’s battleground, moderate-leaning district have raised questions about how the Lower Macungie Township lawmaker will respond.
"You have to focus. If you are trying to comment or fight every single battle, you are going to win none of them."U.S. Rep. Ryan Mackenzie, R-Lehigh Valley
If they’re looking for a vocal confrontation, they’ll likely find themselves waiting.
“I’m more a results-oriented elected official. Sometimes that means working behind the scenes to actually get changes made,” Mackenzie said in an interview with LehighValleyNews.com last week.
“If your approach is always going to be one single maneuver of getting in somebody’s face, I don’t think you’re going to have a collaborative relationship.”
It’s a change of course from past Lehigh Valley representatives who didn’t mince words when they thought Trump was in the wrong. Susan Wild, the three-term Democrat defeated by Mackenzie last November, twice voted to impeach Trump.
Charlie Dent, who represented the Lehigh Valley for 13 years, remains one of Trump’s loudest critics within the Republican Party.
But Mackenzie said that making a scene, particularly against a president he's closely allied himself with, has left Trump's opponents with little to show for their efforts.
"You have to focus. If you are trying to comment or fight every single battle, you are going to win none of them. I am not a political commentator. I did not get into elected office to have a podcast or go on and be a TV commentator later in life," said Mackenzie, who served in the state House for 12 years. "We came here to fight for the people in the Lehigh Valley."
In Trump's corner — mostly
Since launching his congressional campaign in the summer of 2023, Mackenzie has proven to be a vocal supporter of Trump — even when acknowledging instances when daylight exists between himself and Republican leadership.
On a prime time town hall event on CNN Thursday night, Mackenzie defended the president’s tariff strategy and stood up for Elon Musk, the billionaire who’s joked about accidentally cutting ebola prevention programs.
As a member of the Committee on Homeland Security, Mackenzie's been a strong proponent of Trump's policy on illegal immigration and deportations.
Mackenzie has picked a fight with Northampton County — and now political opponent Northampton County Executive Lamont McClure — for not releasing inmates directly into ICE custody without a warrant; the county's policy follows precedent established after a judge found Lehigh County illegally held a New Jersey man in custody at ICE's request.
And Mackenzie said Congress needed to remain patient amid market turmoil in the immediate aftermath of Trump's tariff proposals. Too often, politicians make knee-jerk reactions in the moment, avoiding short-term pain while creating long-term problems down the road, Mackenzie said, pointing to Pennsylvania's underfunded pension plan as an example.
Mackenzie, who became a dad last year, said he's taking a family-oriented approach to governing.
He's introduced bills that would more than double tax credits to families having children and businesses providing paid family leave to new parents. He's proposed legislation that would increase the tax credits for families adopting children and create a matching credit for families conceiving through in vitro fertilization.
The limits of Mackenzie's support for administration policy are starting to come into picture, too.
Mackenzie, who called for more targeted tariffs than the 10% across-the-board tariffs Trump revealed on "Liberation Day," said Congress ought to re-examine its century-old law allowing presidents to set tariffs.
While it's important that the president be able to respond quickly in the event of an emergency — something the more deliberative Congress isn't set up to do — he didn't dismiss the idea of adding restrictions to the president's tariff powers.
"If we want to be the ones that are setting a budget and tax rates and revenue generation, if that’s what it’s about, then maybe that’s something that Congress should have. I think it's a very worthy discussion, and I could envision a spot where it's somewhere in between," he said.
Mackenzie has also repeatedly acknowledged the Trump administration has likely left itself exposed to lawsuits by breaking contracts with vendors. His office, he said, is working with local organizations left holding the bag after Musk's Department of Government Efficiency abruptly ended contracts.
While publicly criticizing the decisions may score political points, he said, that's less important than finding a solution.
“I don’t need them to make a change for everybody in the entire country," he said. "But there will be instances where I will go, ‘I just need you to make the change for the people in my community.'”
Place amid GOP leadership
Mackenzie showed some willingness to push back against party leadership just this month. He was the only Republican to oppose repealing a $5 cap on bank overdraft fees this week.
Earlier in the month, he joined 10 other Republicans and all Democrats on a procedural vote that would allow new parents in the House to vote by proxy. Mackenzie was a co-sponsor of the legislation; his son Leo celebrated his first birthday earlier this month. The effort was opposed on principle by Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana, who repeatedly visited the Lehigh Valley last year to campaign on Mackenzie's behalf.
(Johnson blocked the proxy vote deal, sending the House home rather than allow the vote to proceed. Last week, Johnson brokered a deal for "vote pairing" that allows an absent member to vote present if someone on the opposite side of the issue also agrees to vote present.)
“I don’t need them to make a change for everybody in the entire country. But there will be instances where I will go, ‘I just need you to make the change for the people in my community.'”U.S. Rep. Ryan Mackenzie, R-Lehigh Valley
The biggest test to his approach may come in the weeks ahead as congressional Republicans finalize a bill establishing Trump's vision on border security, taxes and energy. As part of the process, Mackenzie and other House Republicans passed a resolution instructing the House Energy and Commerce Committee to search for $880 billion in cuts to finance the deal.
Achieving those figures would require Congress to slash Medicaid, which provides health insurance to America's poor and vulnerable. The effort has drawn weekly protests to Mackenzie's Salisbury Township office; one-third of Allentown residents rely on Medicaid.
Mackenzie has walked a narrow path of supporting Trump's policies and allowing budget negotiations to go forward but insisting he will only vote for cuts that protects what he calls the "traditional Medicaid population."
Mackenzie said he would support rolling back Medicaid expansion created through the Affordable Care Act, creating work requirements for able-bodied adults without dependents, revoking coverage for illegal immigrants, and requiring more scrutiny of how much medical providers charge for services.
"Those are the types of reforms that not only can we probably get legislative support, but I think the public would agree that those would be good changes for the system," Mackenzie said.
