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For over an hour, Rachel Wallace, Democrat candidate for the 9th congressional seat, answered questions from the audience at a town hall held this week at Lycoming College.
Although she admitted that not everyone might not agree with what she was saying, her goal was not to over promise and then not be able to deliver results on those promises.
Right out of the gate, Wallace got down in the weeds about what are some of the key issues in the election where she is facing off against Republican Congressman Dan Mueser, who has been in office since 2019.
Although she was critical of Mueser for not being a resident of the district he represents-which is legal in Pennsylvania-in her opening remarks, Wallace particularly criticized the fact that her opponent voted for last year's budget bill, which Republicans have called the "One Big Beautiful Bill", and how it has affected residents of the district.
"Dan Meuser voted for a budget bill that is an absolute disaster for our part
of Pennsylvania. It cut food assistance for more than 8,000 people in our communities here. It cut health insurance for nearly 30,000 people in our district, essentially defunding our hospitals and our nursing homes. It tried to take away local control on AI data centers, and it gave an $80 billion tax break to AI data center developers," Wallace said.
Seeing his vote spurred her on to run for his seat in the House of Representatives.
She continued by outlining the three things she is focusing on in her campaign.
The first, she said, is lowering costs.
"Will you raise your hand if you feel good about how much everything costs right now? You're not that blessed. Me neither. At the grocery store, at the gas pump, on our utility bills, at the pharmacy, looking at our healthcare premiums and deductibles going up next year, everything costs too much, and Dan Meuser has voted in support of all of those policies, from the budget bill...through the war in Iran, which has been a disaster...to tariffs that are hurting us and our farmers and our local employers. So there is a lot to be done in Congress next year to lower costs, and that needs to be at the top of priority list because people here are struggling," Wallace said.
"The one thing I want to underline here is home heating oil, since last year, has gone up 75 percent, and one-third of our district heats their homes with home heating oil. So this is not an election about national politics. This is not an election about how we're feeling about the country. This is an election about how we're feeling about heating our own homes, and it is going to be a crisis. It is going to be scary here in Pennsylvania, and we're going to need to take fast, short-term action because it is not going to be pretty if we don't. So we need to lower costs," she said.
Citing stories that Mueser has doubled his wealth since he got in office, Wallace stated that her second priority if elected would be to root out corruption and fraud in Washington.
"Don't you think it's long past time that we ban congressional stock trading," she asked the audience who responded by applauding loudly.
Her third and final priority, she said, would be to bring people to solve local problems.
She highlighted the problems volunteer fire companies are having with the cost of equipment increasing.
"They fight fires, they recruit other firefighters, and they sell chicken barbecues to try to raise a million dollars to buy a fire truck. And many of our fire departments do all of those things for free. It is a tremendous service. It says something about Pennsylvania and who we are that our communities do that for free," she said.
She noted that the amount of funding available to help with buying firefighting equipment has not changed in the past 20 years.
"Years ago, it cost 200, 300,000 to buy a truck. Now it's over a million dollars, but the pot hasn't changed. And so this is what I'm talking about when I talk about how do we solve our local problems. We've got to get that fund up so that it meets the needs of our firefighters," she said.
Wallace also cited AI data centers as another huge issue, with seven of the 12 counties in the district she's seeking to represent "somewhere in the pipeline of at least one, if not more AI data centers."
"I went to Muncy, (I) sat down in Lebanon, in Frackville. I've been with our farmers in central Pennsylvania who are fighting losing their land for power lines for a data center in Allenwood...We just need to take a pause here. We need a short pause so that our local and county ordinances can catch up, so that Harrisburg can catch up. They got some tax breaks they've got to repeal last time I checked, and so that Washington can catch up, and we can get everybody's house in order before we move forward here, because things are happening incredibly fast, and our communities are being asked to pay the cost. When big tech and AI developers, they're the ones who should pay the cost, not us," she said.
She also feels the country needs to slow down in developing AI.
"I think we are moving very fast to a world that we do not understand where we are going. We do not understand what AI is capable of. We do not understand what it means for our economy. We don't understand what these data centers are going to do to our water, to our quality of life. We need to slow down and make sure that we have answers," she said.
Questions from the audience ran the gamut from the rising costs of healthcare to a critique of the administration to whether she would agree to abolishing ICE.
On the corruption in the White House, one person asked Wallace, "Donald Trump has carelessly and illegally spent our tax dollars and he's corruptly used government deals to further his family's financial situation...will you vote to impeach him if you are elected?"
Wallace said that while she agrees with much of what the questioner said, "I will be mad as hell if Congress spends next year trying to impeach Donald Trump because of everything that we have to get done to make life better for people."
"My priorities are going to be how do we end the war, end the tariffs, take on health care insurance companies...if the priority isn't how do we get our government to deliver for people. How do we take action so that life gets better. If it's just about Donald Trump next year, we are failing because we need Congress to make life better for people here," she said.
Citing the violations of due process and the creation of what they called "concentration camps" by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), one person wanted to know if Wallace would support abolishing the agency.
"I've talked to my dad a lot about campaigning, and Dad always says if you can answer a question with a direct yes or no, you better do it. And so I'm going to answer your question with a direct yes or no. But then I want you to hear me out in my explanation because I do not support abolishing ICE. I do support drastically changing how they're doing their jobs," she said.
"ICE used to be there if there was a criminal who was here illegally. It was ICE's job to help remove them, or put them into our justice process where they would be prosecuted and serve their time and then be deported, which is how things should go. We are in a very different place right now...the waste, fraud, and abuse that we are seeing out of DHS right now. Their inspector general just came out with a report about the hundreds of millions of your money that we have wasted on setting up tents that were never used, buying warehouse distribution centers that had no business ever holding anything other than you know a Big Lots box. And so I am 100% on board with going to Congress and using the power of the purse and the power of federal oversight and my own power as someone who can walk into a building and say, "What's going on here? Yes, I will. I will commit to you that I will fight the horrific abuses here," she said.
In response to a question on military aid to Israel, Wallace said that there are supposed to be conditions on our aid and that the federal government needs to make sure those conditions are followed.
On the issue of women's reproductive rights, Wallace stated that she feels that it is very important to have reproductive healthcare, including access to obstetrical and gynecological care-especially in the four counties in the district that don't have it-as well as access to contraception and abortion.
She noted that this is an issue that people feel very strongly about on both sides.
When asked how to get disgruntled Republican voters to vote for her, Wallace contended that they want a lot of the same things the Democrats want.
"They want us to ban congressional stock trading. They want to end the war. They want to end the tariffs. They want to lower prices. They hate the insurance companies like the rest of us," she said.
"This is the thing that infuriates me about our political moment right now, we've got 20 percent of the pie that we really don't agree on and then the 80 percent that we do...When does it get bad enough? Let's actually do something about it and so that's been my conversations with Republicans," she added.