Ryan Mackenzie

The swing district has had one of the most heated and expensive races in Pennsylvania this fall.

WASHINGTON — In a Pennsylvania swing district that’s seen some of the sharpest and highest volume of attack ads this fall, Democrat Bob Brooks has called on Republican U.S. Rep. Ryan Mackenzie (R., Lehigh) to take down ads that he said were false and defamatory.

A lawyer for Brooks — a union leader and retired firefighter who is considered one of the most likely Democrats in the country to flip a GOP-held U.S. House seat in two weeks — sent a letter to Mackenzie and the National Republican Congressional Committee on Sunday in response to a television ad accusing Brooks of “criminal” misconduct.

In the ad, a narrator claims Brooks “violated state law” by not having a workers compensation insurance policy for a lawn-care and snowplowing business he ran on the side of his career as a Bethlehem firefighter.

The business became a frequently promoted part of Brooks’ resumé this year as a first-time candidate with working-class bona fides. Mackenzie, a freshman Republican trying to hold on to a Lehigh Valley-based seat he narrowly flipped two years ago, looked to attack that premise with the ad — sharing the video on social media last week with the added commentary that Brooks is “no working man.”

But according to the Democrat’s lawyer, the ad is based on a false report about Brooks’ small business.

Pennsylvania law requires businesses to have a workers compensation policy in most cases in which the business has at least one employee. A story in July from the Washington Free Beacon claimed Brooks appeared to violate that requirement for at least two years. It referred primarily to a LinkedIn page for Brooks’ son that stated he worked at the company and managed others during years Brooks did not have an insurance policy.

Brooks’ lawyer, however, wrote there were no other employees at the company during that period besides Brooks. The last employee stopped working for Brooks Lawn Care two months before the policy lapsed in November 2017, making it a sole proprietorship that was not required to have the policy, the lawyer wrote in the letter obtained by The Inquirer.

He called on Mackenzie’s campaign and the National Republican Campaign Committee to pull down the ads and post a retraction online by 9:30 a.m. Monday.

“You are now on notice that these statements are false and defamatory,” wrote James C. Lamb, of Sandler Reiff Lamb Rosenstein & Birkenstock. “Any further broadcast or distribution of them is publication with knowledge of falsity that will be regarded as actual malice.”

Mackenzie’s campaign, in a statement after receiving the letter, defended the arguments in the ad. It pointed again to Brooks’ son’s LinkedIn, which continued to state on Sunday that he was a full-time employee of Brooks Lawn Care during the years in question, and that state law requires businesses to have workers compensation insurance even when they employ family members. The LinkedIn page’s previous mention of additional employees was “scrubbed,” Mackenzie’s campaign asserted.

“Conman Bob Brooks is once again relying on lawyers to try and clean up his lies, frauds, and crooked schemes,” Mackenzie campaign spokesperson Arnaud Armstrong said.

NRCC spokesperson Reilly Richardson similarly said the organization “stand[s] by every word of this ad.” The NRCC, the official campaign arm of national Republicans’ effort to keep the House majority, partially paid for the ad.

Brooks ”ran his business for four years without the workers’ comp coverage the law requires, while his own family was running crews for him. Now he wants lawyers to make it go away,” Richardson said in a statement.

Brooks’ campaign, after sending the letter Sunday afternoon, said in a statement that the Republican incumbent was spreading “blatant falsehoods about Bob” and that “Mackenzie and his campaign have been warned.”

Cease-and-desist letters are not uncommon in the heat of high-profile campaigns. Many are ignored as the candidates continue to spend millions and Election Day approaches.

Brooks’ letter is the second known cease-and-desist request made by a Pennsylvania congressional candidate in four competitive races this year that could help determine which party controls the House.

Bucks County Democratic challenger Bob Harvie sent U.S. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick a cease-and-desist in July after the Republican incumbent began portraying him as being under investigation by the FBI. The letter did not stop the claims, and Harvie went on to file a defamation lawsuit against a political action committee making those statements to benefit Fitzpatrick.

The matchup in the 7th Congressional District — which covers the Lehigh Valley and the Poconos — has become the most expensive congressional race in Pennsylvania this fall, with $29 million in ads promoting and attacking the candidates since August, according to the media tracking firm AdImpact.

Mackenzie defeated a three-term Democratic incumbent by a mere 4,000 votes of 403,000 cast in 2024 as President Donald Trump helped Republicans across the state. Two years later, nonpartisan election ratings experts consider it the most likely of four competitive Pennsylvania seats to flip again — largely because of Trump’s unpopularity and the Democratic Party’s confidence in Brooks, who they eagerly recruited to run last year.

Mackenzie has leaned into both his support of Trump’s agenda and the attacks on Brooks’ background.

During a speech at the Trump-themed Republican midterm convention in Dallas last month, Mackenzie laid out controversies he said surrounded Brooks. In ads and social media posts since then, he’s labeled Brooks as a fraud and a thief while largely relying on reporting from conservative publications to make those claims. Brooks has depicted Mackenzie as a liar and “lapdog” following Trump’s agenda.

The 30-second ad that highlights reporting on Brooks’ business was launched by Mackenzie’s campaign and the NRCC. About $580,000 has been spent to air the ad, according to AdImpact.

This article has been updated to include responses from the campaigns and NRCC.

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