Susan Wild, the Democratic congresswoman from Pennsylvania who is running in one of the closest races for a House seat in the country, has privately repeatedly labeled conservative working-class voters in her district as fanatics who “fell for Trump.” But in public, the Pennsylvania Democrat has dramatically softened her positions on hot-button issues as she fights for re-election in her competitive district.
Earlier this year, Wild was caught on a private conference call saying she was “dismayed” that her eastern Pennsylvania district was being redrawn in 2022 to include Carbon County, which she said had turned from a “blue, blue-collar district” to a “red district.” And on her personal Facebook page this year, Wild lambasted a veteran in her constituency, accusing him of being homophobic for refusing to shake her hand at a Memorial Day event. These were not the first times she was caught railing against new voters, whom she viewed as backward and uneducated.
Wild has been on the defensive since redistricting changed the face of her Lehigh Valley district. Carbon County’s predominantly white, lower-income voters were added to a district that includes the majority-Hispanic city of Allentown. Wild has since caught herself in a series of gaffes, disparaging her new voters as backwards rednecks she needs to “educate.”
“Carbon County has a lot of assets, but it’s a county that, even though it was once an Obama county, has now become a Trump county,” she said at a virtual meet and greet in the summer of 2022, uncovered by Fox News. “I’m not quite sure what was going on in their heads, because the people of Carbon County are exactly the kind of people who shouldn’t be voting for a Donald Trump, but I guess I might have to educate them a little bit on that. But most of all, it’s a very rural county.”
While Wild privately denigrates her conservative constituents, she has aggressively moderated her stances on immigration, energy, voter ID and crime. “Wild has made a career out of her back-and-forth,” Ryan Mackenzie, a Republican state representative running against Wild, said earlier this year. Wild, who won her 2022 election – the first since redistricting – by just 2 percentage points, is considered one of the most vulnerable Democratic incumbents seeking re-election. Mackenzie, who has served six terms, ran unopposed in 2022 and defeated his Democratic opponent in 2020 by 20 points.
In January 2022, a month before Wild’s district was redistricted, she dismissed concerns that “people are coming across the border and taking jobs” and disagreed with the statement that “every state is a border state.” In 2018, she called the idea of a border wall “silly” and a “ridiculous waste of taxpayer money.”
But more recently, Wild – who came under fire for interfering in a campaign rally via Zoom while driving – has made a 180-degree turn on the immigration issue.
“It’s time to do something about the southern border,” Wild wrote in an opinion piece in April. “We may be far from the U.S.-Mexico border, but the problems caused by a broken system affect us too, especially with regard to the importation of illegal drugs into our country.”
In May, she called for executive action at the border, urging President Joe Biden to “use all tools at his disposal to better ensure security at the southern border, stop illegal fentanyl, and enable orderly legal immigration.”
Wild has also softened her views on fracking and natural gas, a major industry in the more rural parts of the Keystone State.
During her first congressional campaign in 2018, Wild called for a ban on fracking on public lands. In March 2019, she praised the Green New Deal, a massive green energy spending project championed by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and her far-left “Squad,” as “wonderful” and “right on point.”
Meanwhile, Wild has turned his attention to the natural gas industry, recently criticizing President Joe Biden’s decision to halt the export of liquefied natural gas, citing concerns about the impact it would have on the 72,000 people employed in the industry in Pennsylvania.
Wild is not the only Democrat who sees opposition to natural gas in Pennsylvania and other energy-friendly states as a political minefield. Vice President Kamala Harris, who said in 2019 she was “for banning fracking,” said last month she no longer supported a ban – a change of heart the Associated Press attributed to her “need to win battleground Pennsylvania.”
Wild has also softened her opposition to voter ID requirements. In December 2019, she opposed “strict ID requirements” to vote, but changed course during the campaign after redistricting in 2022. “I have no problem requiring us to show voter ID … as long as people without a driver’s license can easily get some sort of official ID,” Wild said at a debate in October 2022.
She has retracted statements on her campaign website supporting controversial criminal justice reform proposals. Before switching districts, she called for “an end to mandatory minimum sentences” for “non-violent drug offenses” and “an end to the failed ‘war on drugs.'”
Wild also found herself on the defensive because of her ties to anti-Israel groups.
In March 2019, Wild spoke at the annual fundraiser of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, an anti-Israel group known for its ties to the terrorist group Hamas. A few days later, Wild, who is Jewish, described herself as a “very pro-Israel member of Congress.”
And Wild praised on her campaign website, the Washington Free Beacon reported. Wild deleted her recommendation page shortly thereafter.
As she shifts her positions on key policy issues to appeal to her new, more conservative voters, Wild has had to walk back several gaffes. In June, she locked her Facebook account after she made a homophobic slur against a veteran she met at a Memorial Day event.
“I suspect the vet who wouldn’t shake my hand at a Memorial Day event today wouldn’t approve of your second flag,” she captioned a photo posted by a Facebook friend showing a house with an American flag and a gay pride flag flying beneath it.
Despite the public controversy she sparked over Carbon County in 2022, she has had a hard time reining in her comments on Carbon County. In January, she was caught saying on a Zoom call with other Democrats that she was “dismayed” to have to represent Carbon County after redistricting.
“After Trump took office, it became a more working-class Democratic district that took inspiration from Trump’s influence, and it really became a Republican district. So I was dismayed when that district became part of my district,” she said.
When her comments became public, Wild apologized.
