Seeking 7th term, U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly details priorities, responds to controversies

The past two years in office were arguably the most controversial of U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly's 12 years in Congress.

In the days after voters re-elected him to a sixth two-year term, Kelly filed a major lawsuit that sought to rule Pennsylvania's mail-in voting law unconstitutional. Two months later, hours after rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol in protest of unfounded claims of election fraud, Kelly voted against certifying the state's Electoral College votes in an effort to throw the election to then-President Donald Trump.

More:Jan. 6 committee zeroes in on central question: Should Trump be held accountable for Capitol attack?

US House race:In 16th Dist. race, Democrat Pastore: Kelly sues to stop mail-in ballots, 'disenfranchises' voters

Then, in July 2021, the Office of Congressional Ethics recommended that the House Committee on Ethics investigate Kelly for what would amount to an alleged insider trading violation. The stock trade, which the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette first reported in September 2020, is still under review.

The 74-year-old Butler resident hasn't been deterred.

"There is so much more work to do," Kelly said in an email to the Erie Times-News. "The last two years under the Biden administration has made America poorer, weaker, and less secure. I’m running to restore this great nation, to save Americans more of their hard-earned money, to make our streets safer, to secure our borders, to bring jobs back to western Pennsylvania, to lower prescription drug costs, and so much more."

Kelly's pushing to control government spending, address inflation, pass a nationwide heartbeat bill, uphold 2nd Amendment rights and return federal money to the 16th District, including money that's been used for economic development projects and sand replenishment at Presque Isle State Park.

Kelly has been a member of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee since 2013 and chairs a subcommittee that controls tax policy. He's a proponent of a simpler tax code and generating more tax revenue through job creation instead of tax hikes.

Kelly is running against Democrat Dan Pastore of Erie County.

More:2020 election denial is on the ballot in Pennsylvania this year. These are the candidates.

More:Rep. Kelly calls U.S. senator's claims 'patently false'

16th District lines change, benefit Republicans

Not only does Kelly have the advantage of incumbency, the 16th Congressional District also turned more red as a result of redistricting.

Of the 18 current U.S. House districts, the 16th District saw the third-highest decline in population from the time of the 2011 reapportionment, dropping from 705,687 to 688,028, a loss of some 17,660 people. Currently, the district covers Erie, Crawford, Mercer and Lawrence counties and a portion of Butler County.

Starting next year, the district will add the entirety of Butler County and a western portion of Venango County.

The independent, nonpartisan Cook Political Report gives Republicans a 13-point advantage in the 16th District.

More:Census: Erie’s Congressional District to expand under redistricting

Involved in Butler business, politics

George Joseph "Mike" Kelly Jr. was born in Pittsburgh in 1948 and at the age of 10 his family relocated to Butler.

In high school, Kelly was a talented football player who received several accolades, including being named to the all-state first team his senior season, which helped him land athletic and academic scholarships to the University of Notre Dame.

After graduating in 1970, Kelly returned home to work for his father's car dealership, which he had founded in 1953. Kelly bought the dealership from his father in 1995 and has run it since. The dealership started with the Chevrolet and Cadillac franchises and under Kelly expanded to include Hyundai and Kia.

Kelly married Victoria Phillips in 1973. The couple have four children and several grandchildren.

Before running for federal office, Kelly served on Butler City Council and the Butler Area School Board, among other civic boards.

Kelly won his race for Congress against Kathy Dahlkemper in 2010, riding a midterm wave of anti-Obamacare sentiment, the informal name for President Barack Obama's landmark Affordable Care Act.

Addressing high inflation

Kelly blames "excessive" and "irresponsible" spending by the administration of President Joe Biden and Democrats in control of both the House and Senate on driving inflation to a 40-year high. Kelly said Washington has a spending "addiction."

"My solutions are simple: we must reduce federal spending and promote a pro-America energy policy that will increase supply and reduce costs both at the pump and the store," he wrote in a recent guest column for the Erie Times-News.

Kelly opposed Biden's $740 billion Inflation Reduction Act, saying the bill will exacerbate the problem by imposing a 15% minimum tax on large corporations and higher taxes on the energy sector.

Kelly has said he wants to lower taxes and stop Democrats' "reckless" spending if he wins re-election. Those measures, too, will help halt rising inflation, he's said.

Energy policy

Kelly blames high gas prices on America's dependence on foreign oil and further blames Biden for rejecting a key permit for the Keystone XL Pipeline on his first day in office, which prompted the pipeline's builder, TC Energy, to abandon the project in June 2021.

The pipeline between the U.S. and Canada would have delivered an estimated 830,000 barrels of crude oil per day to oil refineries in the U.S.

Kelly wants Biden to reverse that decision. He also wants to expand oil imports from U.S. allies, specifically Mexico and Canada, and reduce or eliminate imports from "bad actors," like Russia and Venezuela.

Kelly has criticized Biden for tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, importing a record amount of oil from Russia in May 2021 and waiving sanctions on the Russian natural gas pipeline Nord Stream 2.

However, Kelly did credit Biden for halting oil imports from Russia this year after it invaded Ukraine. Kelly said it was a "step in the right direction."

Kelly says Pennsylvania, which is the second-leading producer of natural gas only to Texas, can help the U.S. export supplies to European and other allies around the world.

Social Security and Medicaid

The Social Security Board of Trustees in June released its annual report on the financial solvency of the Social Security trust fund, which showed that the fund will be able to meet its obligations for the next 12 years, but after 2034 it will only be three-quarters funded.

The Medicare Board of Trustees' annual report, also issued in June, showed a rosier but still grim outlook than it did in 2021. Medicare's Part A trust fund is now projected to be depleted in 2028, instead of 2026. Medicare Part A covers inpatient hospital, nursing home, skilled nursing, home health and hospice care for 63 million Americans age 65 and older. With incoming revenue alone, Medicare Part A will be able to cover just under 90% of benefits from 2029 to 2031.

Bloomberg, New York Magazine and others reported that Republicans plan to propose cuts to both safety net programs by using debt-ceiling negotiations next year to force such concessions out of Democrats — if the GOP regains control of the House in next month's midterm election.

"I am committed to preserving and strengthening Social Security not only for current retirees, but for our children and grandchildren," Kelly said. "Unfortunately, today Social Security faces serious fiscal challenges that must be responsibly addressed by lawmakers in order to secure these programs’ financial future. Demographic trends in the last few decades pose a long-term challenge. Due to increasing lifespans and declining birth rates, there is an imbalance in the ratio of working individuals to retiring beneficiaries."

Kelly said the fiscal challenges of the programs need to be addressed, but that "it is important that the promises made to current retirees and workers regarding their Social Security benefits be kept."

Kelly seeks national ban on abortion

In his six terms in Congress, Kelly has fought to enact anti-abortion legislation. In June, he reintroduced a national heartbeat bill that would require a doctor to check for a fetal heartbeat before performing an abortion and ban the procedure if a heartbeat is detected. The bill would make it a crime for a doctor to perform an abortion if they detect a heartbeat, if they don't check for one first or if they make a determination but fail to tell the mother. Doctors would face a fine, up to five years in prison, or both. It would not penalize the mother. The bill would make an exception for the life of the mother.

The bill specifically excludes from the definition of the life of the mother any psychological or emotional conditions. Determining a heartbeat would be done according to "standard medical practice," according to the text of the legislation.

Kelly touts his opposition to taxpayer-funded abortion, abortion funding in foreign aid, abortion based on gender or race and abortion in cases where the unborn child can feel pain.

He celebrated the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in June to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 landmark case that made abortion a federal constitutional right. The ruling sent the decision on abortion back to individual states.

But Kelly, a member of the Pro Life Caucus, is now pushing for national abortion prohibitions.

"Protecting the unborn is among the highest calling of all elected officials," Kelly said in a recent guest column for the Erie Times-News.

Lowering the cost of college, student loan forgiveness

Biden announced in August he would forgive up to $20,000 of student-loan debt for millions of Americans, sparking criticism from scores of Republicans, including Kelly, who tweeted that Biden was trying to "score quick political points" and had violated the Constitution in doing so.

In a Sept. 29 op-ed in The Hill, Kelly asked "Where is the outrage?" over Biden's executive order.

"President Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan is not only pure politics, but it’s also bad policy," Kelly wrote. "Congress can and should have a healthy debate about ways to lower the cost of college.

"However, blanket forgiveness through executive order just to score quick political points jeopardizes the Constitution and does not provide long-term solutions for future borrowers," he continued. "Without concrete plans to lower costs, the nation is left with only an unhealthy debate about winners and losers."

A month earlier, the official White House Twitter account called out Kelly for his opposition to Biden's order.

"Asking plumbers and carpenters to pay off the loans of Wall Street advisors and lawyers isn’t just unfair. It’s also bad policy," Kelly tweeted on Aug. 24.

A day later, the White House responded, criticizing Kelly for having a $987,237 Paycheck Protection Program loan forgiven. PPP loans were issued during the COVID-19 pandemic to help businesses keep workers employed.

Kelly responded: "A Democrat governor declared my family's business non-essential and shut our doors," he wrote. "This money saved over 160 essential jobs in Western Pennsylvania during the pandemic. PPP loans are designed to be forgiven. Student loans are not. Big difference!"

So how would Kelly address the cost of college?

"Among the bills that have been proposed over the years: ensuring colleges use their large, tax-free endowments to lower tuition costs and provide scholarships to students to lower their student debt before graduating," he said. "It’s important to remember that nothing about this debt forgiveness is free. All of that money comes from hardworking American taxpayers. The waitress or cashier should not have to pay for the loans of the law or business student. That’s simply not fair."

'Stolen election' claims, voting lawsuits, opposition to certifying Biden victory

Kelly has been a staunch supporter of former President Donald Trump and from the outset of Trump's presidency helped him push conspiracies about a "deep state" running the federal government in an attempt to upset the new administration's agenda. In 2017, at a private dinner of GOP officials, Kelly accused Trump's predecessor, former President Barack Obama, of running a shadow government, but later walked back the comments.

But Kelly's biggest show of fealty to Trump came both in the runup to the 2020 election and in the months that followed. Kelly filed multiple lawsuits in Pennsylvania over the election, including a post-election lawsuit that sought to throw out 2.5 million votes cast by mail. Kelly's lawsuit contended that the Pennsylvania General Assembly improperly changed election law with the passage of Act 77 of 2019, which — among other things — gave all voters the opportunity to vote by mail without providing a reason. Kelly claimed the law needed to be approved by voters through an amendment to the state's constitution.

The U.S. Supreme Court, however, refused to hear Kelly's case, in part, because he filed it after the election.

Kelly then voted against certifying the results of the election when Congress met on Jan. 6, 2021, hours after a violent mob of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in an effort to delay the proceedings.

Since then, Kelly has continued to baselessly claim that the election was stolen. At a news conference in Erie in July, Kelly pointed to Act 77, but — when asked — would not explain how court rulings over the law equated to theft.

Kelly now says his lawsuit was never about reversing the results of the election.

"The Pennsylvania State Constitution requires changes to voting laws to occur by constitutional amendment, not legislation, which Act 77 did," he said. "My opposition to Act 77 is not and has never been about reversing the results of November’s election or taking away any candidate’s legally earned votes. It is about making sure the law, as written, actually matters."

This year, Kelly's office became indirectly entwined in the House select committee investigation over the Jan. 6 riots and efforts to overturn the election. Text messages obtained by the committee connected Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson's office to an attempted plot to turn over slates of fake electors to Vice President Mike Pence for consideration. Johnson later claimed that someone from Kelly's office had passed on the fake slates of electors for Wisconsin and Michigan to Johnson's chief of staff. That Kelly staffer, former Chief of Staff Matthew Stroia, had reportedly received the slates from a Trump operative, Mike Roman.

Kelly has denied having any knowledge of his office's role in the plot and has called it a non-issue because a Pence official declined to accept the slates when presented with them on Jan. 6. Kelly's office claimed to have launched an investigation into the matter, but in July Kelly said he was not aware whether his office reached out to Stroia as part of its internal review.

As part of its open independent investigation into the fake elector scheme, the U.S. Department of Justice in September seized Roman's cell phone and issued subpoenas to 40 other Trump associates.

Pastore, Kelly's Democratic opponent, has called on the congressman to release all communications from his office about the scheme.

More:In combative news conference, Rep. Mike Kelly responds to claims of pardon, fake electors

Kelly ethics investigation

Kelly is also involved in a House Committee on Ethics investigation over alleged insider trading involving a 2020 stock purchase made by his wife, Victoria Kelly. At the time, Kelly was pushing for a Department of Commerce investigation into foreign imports that were hurting Cleveland Cliff's plants (formerly AK Steel) in Kelly's hometown of Butler and in Zanesville, Ohio.

The probe is looking at whether Kelly gave his wife privileged information that prompted her to buy between $15,001 to $50,000 of stock in Cleveland Cliffs hours after Kelly's office was notified that the U.S. Department of Commerce would open the investigation into foreign imports.

Victoria Kelly bought the stock at $4.70 a share on April 29, 2020, and on Jan. 11, 2021, sold her stock when the price was $18.11 per share, netting anywhere from $42,806 to $142,672.

"It is still under review and we have provided all of the documents requested," Kelly said on the ethics investigation. "I have said this from the beginning. From the start of my running the dealership, I have always been an avid supporter of local companies in the Butler region. Even in the early days, we would give a customer of the dealership a few shares of AK Steel stock. We did this to support the local economy. There was nothing unethical about my supporting a local business, as I had done for the past 50 years."

Stock trading ban

Kelly's election lawsuits, his vote against certifying Biden's victory and the ethics investigation have been issues that his opponent, Pastore, has focused on during the campaign. Pastore has questioned why Kelly won't support the Ban Congressional Stock Trading Act, which prohibits members of Congress and their spouses from trading individual stocks. It would make changes to the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act of 2012, which required stricter reporting of stock trades, among other controls.

"(House) Speaker (Nancy) Pelosi and her husband are well-known for trading stocks and making lucrative profits off of those trades," Kelly said. "She can bring the STOCK Act to the floor — and hinted she would do so by Election Day — but she has chosen not to do that because she knows there is not widespread support for this bill, even among Democrats."

Kelly said he has backed legislation in the past that banned insider trading.

"Following the 2008 financial crisis, in which some elected officials allegedly unjustly profited off of financial information not widely available to the public, I supported legislation that put guardrails into place to ensure members of Congress cannot profit off of the information acquired through their government positions," Kelly said.

Candidate bio

• Mike Kelly

• Party: Republican

• Age: 74

• Occupation: U.S. representative, 16th Congressional District, 2011-present.

• Education: Bachelor's degree, University of Notre Dame.

• Family: Wife, Victoria; Four children.

• Information: mikekellyforcongress.com, twitter.com/MikeKellyforPA, facebook.com/MikeKellyforCongress

Matthew Rink can be reached at mrink@timesnews.com and on Twitter at @ETNRink.

This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: Mike Kelly seeks 7th term in U.S. Congress, sees Democratic opposition