Kelly aiming for reelection against challenger Nouri
Pennsylvania’s 16th Congressional District seat is up for grabs in November’s general election, as Republican incumbent Mike Kelly aims to secure an eighth term in Congress. His challenger is 25-year-old Erie County native Preston Nouri.
Kelly, 76, has decades of business experience as an owner of local car dealerships, and he has been in politics since 2011, when he was first elected to Congress. Today, he is chairman of the Ways and Means Committee’s Tax Subcommittee and considers himself a friend of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
Meanwhile, Nouri has worked his way up the political ladder through various internships in Erie County, Pittsburgh, and Washington D.C.
Nouri is campaigning on issues such as preserving reproductive rights for women, health care reform and tax code reform.
Kelly is campaigning on an “America First” platform in foreign policy, energy, national security and business.
“Our government has seen many changes since I took office in 2011,” Kelly said. “We've seen what can happen when America leads on the global stage and what can happen when administrations appease the world's bad actors. … Americans are tired of open borders. They're tired of an administration that puts ‘America Last’ and not ‘America First.’”
At first glance, the candidates seem quite different, but beneath the surface, both candidates are making similar promises to the electorate — even if the means to fulfill them would be different.
Both Kelly and Nouri are trying to attract voters by saying they can help revitalize the state economy, which is currently being defined by inflation and an increasing cost of living. In Nouri’s case, he said the economy was one of the driving factors for his running for office.
“I’ve seen my family and neighbors struggle just to make ends meet, despite working long hours,” Nouri said. “Watching them stretch every dollar inspired me to run for Congress.”
Kelly has made it a point to try to pin the region’s economic troubles on the Biden administration and has been critical of Biden’s energy policies.
“Everywhere you look, from the supermarket to the gas pump, runaway spending and radical energy policies created inflation that costs Pennsylvanians thousands of dollars more a year,” Kelly said. “I'm running for reelection to restore some fiscal sanity to Washington, to put American energy first, and to give hardworking Pennsylvanians a shot at the American dream once again.”
Nouri puts most of the blame for the region’s economic struggles on corporate greed and a lack of decent-paying jobs.
“It’s hard for families to make ends meet when prices at the grocery store and gas station are rising faster than their paychecks,” Nouri said. “We need to crack down on corporate price gouging and bring good-paying jobs back.”
Although Nouri was born and raised in Erie, he said he has made an effort to reach out to voters in Butler County and other areas in the southern part of the 16th Congressional District.
“Every community in this large district deserves a representative who listens to them,” Nouri said. “As much, if not more, of my time on the campaign trail has been spent in Butler and the southern part of the district compared to Erie. I want to hear directly from voters about what matters most to them — from economic issues to health care — and I’ll keep working to earn their trust.”
If Nouri is to unseat Kelly, he will face an uphill struggle. The 16th Congressional District is a Republican stronghold. No Democrat has represented the district since Thomas E. Scanlon, who was in office from 1943 to 1945.
However, Nouri is confident that he can get the job done.
“Jason Altmire, Kathy Dahlkemper and even former President Barack Obama have won in these counties in recent memory because they focused on kitchen-table issues that matter to families here,” Nouri said. “That’s exactly what I’m doing in this campaign. I’m working to show the people of the 16th District that I’m here to represent them, not any political party or special interest group.”
Kelly indicated that he isn’t resting on his laurels either.
“This election is no different than our previous races,” Kelly said. “We are always one vote away from not returning to Washington, so I never take anything for granted.
“… I'm running for reelection with the same message I ran on in 2010: It's time to get big government out of the way and get our great country back on track.”
