Scott Perry

Janelle Stelson has really never stopped running against U.S. Rep. Scott Perry since she walked off the WGAL News 8 set in September 2023.

Stelson won the Democratic nomination for the 10th Congressional District the next year, then lost to Perry by less than 1.3 percentage points in the general election

For her then, this year’s 10th Congressional District Democratic primary has been something of a systems check, getting the endorsements, funding and staff in place to vanquish Republican Perry this fall.

Dauphin County Commissioner Justin Douglas, her opponent on the Democratic ballot, is solely focused on May 19 and trying to survive and advance.

The two different approaches have made this spring’s race feel a like a game of political hide-and-seek.

Stelson, working with a built-in name recognition advantage from her long central Pennsylvania television career, has played this extremely safe.

While maintaining a steady schedule of campaign appearances, she has studiously avoided giving Douglas a shared debate stage.

In forums and on her campaign website, she focuses almost her entire attention on taking down Perry — a broadly unifying goal for Democrats.

Stelson has said she is trying to avoid a divisive primary battle ahead of what could be one of the closest House races in the nation.

“A lot have made a big deal about: ‘Oh Janelle, you didn’t show up at this forum,’ or ‘Why didn’t you go to this?’” Stelson said in response to a question about her no debate policy at an April event.

“Part of it is I think people are sick of the paralyzing, partisan politics. I am not going to rip apart another Democrat.”

Douglas has turned that rope-a-dope strategy into an attack line, arguing that by not debating him, Stelson is disrespecting the Democratic voters of the 10th and missing a valuable opportunity to build her base from two years ago.

Noting Stelson regularly blasts Perry for having stopped in-person town halls in 2019, he argues “you’re using his same playbook, in a Democratic primary, with people who you’re going to need their votes to get across the finish line. It doesn’t make sense to me, at all.

“I just think she has to make a case for why she should get Round Two against Scott Perry,” Douglas said. “And the case can’t be: ' I have endorsements. I have money.’”

Some political strategists say, whether Douglas likes it or not, it’s not that uncommon for politicians who believe they have a strong lead to try to avoid anything that would help to elevate their opponent.

It’s actually smart for Stelson, said one veteran Democratic strategist from Harrisburg who is not involved in this primary, in the still-pink 10th.

Noting many of the primary forums have been put together by progressive groups, “sometimes you’re forced to stake positions that hurt how people look at you when it comes to the general election — especially independent voters,” the source said, asking not to be identified in order to speak frankly about his fellow Democrats.

The progressives, this conventional thinking goes, will still be there to cast a vote against Perry come the fall.

Center v. Left

As with any primary, the candidates are in broad agreement on many issues.

Stelson and Douglas both support rebuilding voting rights protections and expanding ballot access, codifying a woman’s right to abortion into federal law, and trying to build more fairness into the economy.

But there are marked contrasts.

Stelson, a registered Republican for most of her life, is really running from the political middle. Douglas unabashedly wears the mantle of progressive populism.

So, where Stelson supports restoring the Affordable Care Act tax credits as the best way to improve access to health care, Douglas wants Medicare-for-all or something comparable.

On her website and in appearances, Stelson usually sticks to pointing out the bad in Trump-era Republican policies — the implied understanding being she is the Democrats’ best chance to help reverse them.

“The story of Scott Perry keeps getting worse,” Stelson said in a statement to PennLive just this week.

“His extreme votes are hurting our community and making everything from gas to groceries more expensive.... That’s why my focus remains exactly where it has been from the beginning: defeating Perry and finally bringing independent leadership to this district.”

Douglas’s website often not only states his position on an issue, it then cites specific legislation that he’s interested in supporting.

Douglas says Stelson’s lack of specificity on issues should give Democrats pause.

As a case in point, he cited Stelson’s failure at a recent campaign forum to endorse an increase in the income cap on Social Security taxes — something Douglas notes is a pillar of Democratic policy to keep the nation’s universal pension plan solvent.

When asked for a clarification this week, Stelson’s campaign simply reiterated her commitment to protect Social Security, with a staying-on-message blast at Perry for his past statements about needing to raise the benefit-eligibility age.

Voters at some forums have pressed Stelson on immigration issues, where her public position has evolved from two years ago.

“I’d like to secure our border and make sure they don’t get into the country,” Stelson said in a debate with Perry in October 2024, referring to undocumented immigrants. “The ones who are here, we need to find out where they are and they need to be sent home. Absolutely.”

She’s modulated that stance this year, in light of the excesses of this winter’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement crackdowns.

While still saying she would work with anyone to secure America’s borders and put a stop to illegal immigration, Stelson is now fully supportive of the kind of ICE reforms Congressional Democratic leadership has been pressing for, including full identification and use of body cameras.

And this year, she has said the priority for deportations should be undocumented citizens arrested for violent crimes.

Douglas, meanwhile, has said his goal is for a complete reset of American immigration policy, including the abolition of the current ICE, which he said has broken trust with the American people.

While both candidates say they want to give permanent legal status to the so-called “dreamers” who entered America as children and have grown up here, only Douglas has specifically expressed a willingness to support a path to citizenship for certain other undocumented people.

Stelson’s free to change her positions, Douglas says, but his bottom line is that, if elected, voters will always know what they’re getting with him and, if he changes his mind, why.

The background

Both candidates are relative newcomers to electoral politics.

Stelson, a native of the Pacific Northwest, landed in south central Pennsylvania 1986 when she took a job with Harrisburg’s ABC affiliate.

She is best known for her 26-year stint in the anchor’s seat at WGAL, the longtime ratings leader for local news in the Harrisburg / York / Lancaster television market.

Therein lies Stelson’s secret weapon: That television career gives her a name recognition that most local politicians could only dream of, and it propelled her past a six-person field in the Democratic primary for this seat in 2024.

She lost to Perry in the general election, and has been working ever since to get another crack at the incumbent in a year when President Donald Trump is not on the ballot.

Part of that work included moving her residence and voting address to Cumberland County’s West Shore in 2025.

During the 2024 campaign, Stelson, who is single, maintained her residence in Manheim Township, Lancaster County, which is actually in the neighboring 11th House District.

She and her campaign consultants said then it was a distinction without a difference, noting Stelson had worked in the television market that encompassed the entire 10th District for more than three decades.

She did pledge pledge to move into the 10th if she won the seat.

But the question gave Perry an easy attack line, and in a race with a margin that small, it was something Stelson wanted to try to defuse this time around.

She moved into a rented home owned by a campaign contributor on Oyster Mill Road in East Pennsboro Township, Cumberland County last summer, though she still owns the home in Lancaster, too.

“I did listen — and a lot of people asked that question last time — and I now live in Camp Hill, Cumberland County,” Stelson told CBS 21 last week.

Douglas, who spent most of his youth in California, landed in the Hummelstown area in 2015 to accept a pastorate with the Brethren in Christ Church.

His pastorate here came to an abrupt end in 2019, however, when the denomination revoked his ministerial credentials in a dispute over welcoming LGBT people into the church’s life.

Douglas, supported by a large base from his former church, then opened a new, non-denominational church in Harrisburg, while supplementing his reduced income by working shifts as an Uber driver and coaching Crossfit.

After getting increasingly involved in local activism spawned by the 2020 killing of George Floyd and, locally, a spate of in-custody deaths at Dauphin County Prison, Douglas decided to run an upstart campaign for Dauphin County Commissioner in 2023.

Running on the Democratic ticket as a distinct outsider against three entrenched incumbents, Douglas scored an upset win and brought a reform agenda into the county government.

Pointing to a record that includes the hiring of a new medical services provider at the prison, election reforms including ballot curing and an expansion of mail ballot drop-off sites around the county, and largely dismantling a shadow government that had run county affairs for years, Douglas argues that his record shows he is exactly the kind of change-maker that, if sent to Washington, can make the Congress work better for all.

A married father of two, Douglas lives in Conewago Township, Dauphin County.

Inevitable or upstart?

The overarching theme of Stelson’s primary campaign is that she’s the best candidate to take down Perry.

She does have some credentials that make the case like, for example, the financial wherewithal to fight the campaign on all fronts.

Through the end of April, her Friends of Janelle Stelson committee had spent $1,478,000 on the ‘26 race, and still had more than $3.3 million in the bank.

Douglas’s committee, by contrast, has spent $127,678 on the race, with just $10,594 still available.

National Democrats are all in for Stelson.

She has the endorsement of major party groups like the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and Democrat-allied groups like Emily’s List and the New Democratic Coalition.

House Majority PAC, the largest outside spender for Democratic U.S. House candidates, has already booked $3.5 million in television airtime for the CD 10 race, all of it scheduled for October, according to data from Mediaradar, an advertising intelligence firm.

Stelson’s also got the full support of most local elected Democrats, many of whom who argue she earned the right to another shot at Perry by virtue of how close she came in 2024.

Douglas says he quite sure those Democratic voters will find common cause with him if he can get through the primary.

“We work on a shoestring budget, but we have a lot of excitement behind us. I think that excitement only grows if we get through the primary, and the funds will come with that,” Douglas said.

“I’m here to unite the Democratic Party around progressive values that too often get thrown to the wayside,” Douglas said at a forum earlier this spring.

“We have to reclaim our F.D.R. spirit, which is bold reform, not Band-Aid fixes.”

His biggest challenge?

Can he get enough Democrats to hear him out in a shoestring campaign relying primarily on a small cadre of volunteers, free media, a billboard or two, and appearances at often sparsely-attended public forums.

The 10th District includes all of Dauphin County, most of Cumberland County, and roughly the northern half of York County.

Primary Election Day is May 19.