WASHINGTON — In a Pennsylvania election where a few thousand votes could make all the difference, the last-minute entrance of a Green Party candidate with a background in Republican politics has sparked the second allegation of election meddling in three months and complicated one of the nation’s most competitive U.S. House races this fall.
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The Lehigh Valley-based 7th Congressional District matchup features U.S. Rep. Ryan Mackenzie, a Republican who won the seat by 1 percentage point in 2024, and Bob Brooks, a Democratic union leader and retired firefighter.
Both parties are prioritizing the race as control of the U.S. House could come down to a few seats nationwide.
But the emergence of a third-party candidate has alarmed both Democrats — who have long claimed that Green Party candidates pull votes from their nominees — and the Green Party of Pennsylvania, which said it does not know the person now representing its platform in one of the state’s highest-profile races.
“It sounds a lot like somebody’s just fooling around and trying to use the Green Party name, which is a well-known thing that happens in many states,” said Tim Runkle, co-chair of the state party.
Andrew Tupone, 37, of Northampton County, filed his nomination papers with the state last week ahead of a Monday deadline for third-party candidates. He was the only candidate to file to represent the Green Party in a Pennsylvania race for Congress.
Unlike the Green Party’s endorsed candidate for governor — Tony Dastra, of Lancaster County — Tupone does not have a long association with the party or its left-leaning policies. In 2021, he was the Republican nominee for a Northampton County magisterial court seat. Voter registration records show he changed his party affiliation from Republican to Democrat in February, and then from Democrat to Green in April.
In an interview, Tupone rejected accusations that he remained affiliated with the Republican Party or that he was asked to run in a way that would draw votes away from the Democratic nominee. He described a leftward shift in his political views after voting for President Donald Trump in 2020, though he said he couldn’t recall who he voted for in the 2024 presidential race between Trump and Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.
“A lot of people are disillusioned with both parties,” Tupone said. “They’re sick of all the stuff that’s going on.”
Tupone also said he did not pay anyone to help gather signatures for his nominating papers, which he turned in with upwards of 9,000 signatures — more than twice as many as required. Runkle said Green Party members encountered paid canvassers for Tupone who declined to say who was funding the effort.
According to a copy of the nominating papers obtained by The Inquirer, only one of the 22 individuals who gathered signatures is from Pennsylvania. The rest are from states all over the country. Multiple have worked for Republican campaigns, according to public records.
Colin McEvers, who gathered signatures for Tupone in Lehigh County, is a Republican candidate for the Maryland General Assembly who is also listed as the contact for a Maryland White Republican Council. Others — including individuals from Illinois and Michigan — have been paid to canvas for GOP campaigns, according to Federal Elections Commission records.
Tupone said he had no knowledge of anyone paying his canvassers.
“I went around and I gave a lot of my nominating papers to friends to give to other people, and I sent it to them as well,” Tupone said. “And as I went around I recruited people and asked them.”
While the signatures appear to be based in the district — which stretches from the cities of Allentown, Bethlehem and Easton into the more Republican-leaning Poconos — the other candidates have until Aug. 10 to challenge their legitimacy.
Such challenges are common, and the Brooks campaign is reviewing its options to decide whether to bring a challenge, according to a source familiar with the campaign’s thinking.
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‘No one’s paying me to run’
Jenna Kauffman, Brooks’ campaign manager, in a statement described the situation as a GOP-initiated and “desperate scheme to meddle in this race.”
She connected it to a last-minute $1.7 million advertising campaign against Brooks in the May primary that appeared to be run by Democrats but was actually funded by a Republican political organization.
The spending, by a political action committee called Lead Left, was aimed at boosting another Democrat who observers considered to have a worse shot at beating Mackenzie in the November election. But the effort was anonymous, and records that became public only after Brooks won show that it was funded by a Conservative Americans PAC.
The effort to prevent Brooks from emerging from the Democratic primary came as he coalesced support from across the ideological spectrum with high-profile endorsements ranging from moderate Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro to U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, a democratic socialist.
“Voters deserve to know who is paying for this effort and whether Ryan Mackenzie and his Republican backers are involved,” Kauffman said, painting Tupone’s candidacy as a continuation of the move in the primary.
Mackenzie’s campaign did not address that comment when asked about it Monday.
Tupone said the inference was “just false,” and that he instead likes the values of the Green Party, which he said included supporting the environment, social justice and “stopping the corruption and also the genocide in Gaza.”
“No one’s paying me to run. No one’s asked me to run for this office. I’m running on my own, hopefully with a lot of hope from everyone who wants to volunteer,” Tupone said. “I’m not associated with the Republican Party any more. I’m not a candidate for them.”
For years, Democrats have voiced concerns about the Green Party and other third-party candidates “spoiling” elections, from Jill Stein in the 2016 presidential race that first put Trump in power, to the 2024 U.S. Senate race in Pennsylvania when Democratic U.S. Sen. Bob Casey lost to Republican Dave McCormick by about 15,000 votes. In that 2024 election, a Green Party candidate won about 66,000 votes, a Libertarian candidate won almost 90,000 and a Constitution Party candidate won more than 23,000.
In the 7th District in 2024, Mackenzie defeated incumbent Democrat Susan Wild by 4,062 votes out of more than 403,000 cast. That was the narrowest margin out of any of the state’s 17 districts, making it a key tossup district this year.
That margin is also significantly different than the one Shapiro potentially faces during his reelection campaign this year as he maintains a sizable lead over Republican Stacy Garrity, and as a Green candidate officially filed to run on Monday. Shapiro defeated Republican Doug Mastriano in 2022 by almost 793,000 votes; the Green Party candidate won just over 24,000 votes.
Runkle said nobody solicited the Green Party’s endorsement in a Pennsylvania congressional race this year, and a personal conversation he had with Tupone left “a lot of questions.”
He said the party is concerned about its reputation and about being targeted in ways that don’t lift up its platform, which focuses on environmental protections and liberal positions on health care. But he also pushed back on concerns that the party should be considered a spoiler.
“I do solidly believe that the Green Party policies and the values we represent has a solid bloc of voters,” Runkle said. “If people think that’s spoiling the race then they should try harder to speak to the issues that we speak to.”
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