Trump is headed to Bucks County this weekend, but don’t expect Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick to be there

Former President Donald Trump’s first stop in Pennsylvania on Saturday will be a fundraiser in Bucks County — a short distance from U.S. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick’s district office.

But Fitzpatrick’s plans on Saturday remain unclear.

The self-described moderate Republican, who has a history of dodging questions about Trump, did not respond to inquiries about whether he’ll attend the event.

That came as little surprise to political observers who note Democrats in the politically split district have been trying to tie Fitzpatrick to Trump for years.

“You see this in a lot of suburban areas with Republicans in tight races,” GOP strategist Vince Galko said. “They may be voting for him but don’t want to be associated with him, or seen with him at a rally because then you’re forced to comment on anything that’s said or done there.”

Fitzpatrick is the lone Republican still representing one of Philadelphia’s collar counties and one of 18 House Republicans elected in districts where voters backed President Joe Biden in 2020. The district, where Democrats narrowly outnumber Republicans, is solidly middle class and made up almost entirely of Bucks County. It’s a bellwether for the state and a place where divisions between the Republican Party’s Trump loyalists and more moderate members have been playing out for years.

But in a presidential election year, parties tend to come together and the fundraiser, which Trump will attend ahead of a rally in Lehigh County, is an early sign of that. Bucks GOP chair Pat Poprik, who has criticized Trump in the past, said she’ll attend the high-dollar event.

“I’m the chair of the party and the president’s coming to Bucks County,” Poprik said.

For Fitzpatrick, it’s a precarious political moment. He’s navigating fending off an ultraconservative challenger, Mark Houck, in the April 23 primary and positioning himself to appeal to enough Bucks County voters to hang onto his seat come November.

But the fundraiser is also an opportunity to be around big GOP donors on his turf. One of the cohosts of the fundraiser, Newtown Athletic Club owner Jim Worthington, is a longtime donor to Fitzpatrick.

“If I’m him, I go visit the troops in some far-off land when Trump arrives,” said Democratic political consultant Mike Mikus. “ … Because you can’t win. If Donald Trump happens to read an article where he says, ‘I’m not going,’ who knows what Donald Trump will say at the next rally.”

GOP Senate candidate Dave McCormick, who has endorsed Trump, will also miss the former president’s events, his campaign said, due to a previously scheduled family obligation.

Fitzpatrick has not said whether he will endorse Trump, the party’s presumptive nominee, or vote for him, with just two weeks until the Pennsylvania primary. He’s also running a very low-key primary race of his own, avoiding national and local media.

Neither Fitzpatrick’s campaign nor his congressional office staff have responded to nearly a dozen requests from The Inquirer seeking to reach him over the last two months about his reelection campaign.

Fitzpatrick was endorsed by Trump in 2020 but also skirted questions then on whether he was backing him.

Poprik said she thinks Fitzpatrick, who the party endorsed in his primary, “is doing the right thing.”

“He’s got a battle in the primary and his focus should be 1 million percent on his race and any deviation is not good,” she said. “The Republicans in this county know Brian, know what he stands for ... once the primary is done, then they can talk about the president.”

Poprik for her part said she thinks immigration and the economy will unify previously politically divided Republicans in Bucks behind Trump. “The bottom line is ... you want your family safe, to be able to feed them and keep them protected,” Poprik said. “What we have now and what we had when [Trump] was there, it’s polar opposites.”

A former federal prosecutor and FBI agent, Fitzpatrick is consistently ranked among the most bipartisan members of the House. He cochairs the Problem Solvers Caucus and is a leading voice pushing for the U.S. to fund Ukraine, which his party’s most right-wing members largely oppose.

Early in Trump’s presidency, Fitzpatrick broke with the GOP by opposing efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act. He bucked most of his party in a 2022 gun control vote, voted for raising the debt ceiling, and was a vocal proponent of the infrastructure bill, which he backed. He denounced the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol as “nothing short of a coup attempt,” and joined six other House Republicans in a resolution to censure Trump.

But Fitzpatrick also voted against impeaching Trump and against forming a select committee to investigate the Jan. 6 attack. He joined every Republican in the House in opposing Biden’s American Rescue Plan. More recently, he voted for impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and initially supported hard-right U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan for House speaker, before flipping his vote during the chaotic search for a GOP speaker.

Houck, a first-time candidate and antiabortion activist, is hoping to turn out enough conservative Republicans frustrated with Fitzpatrick to win the April 23 primary. Houck said he plans to attend the president’s fundraiser.

At an event last month in Upper Bucks County, members of the Pennridge Area Republican Club booed at the mention of Fitzpatrick’s name. One man shouted out, “He’s a RINO!”

“He’s already left the party,” Houck said at the event. “He doesn’t vote with us. He wouldn’t have voted for Mayorkas’ impeachment if I wasn’t running for office.”

But conversations with some of those members also revealed concerns about whether a more conservative candidate can win in the swing district in November.

Fitzpatrick’s social media shows he’s attending small events around the county with Little League teams and veterans but none have been open to the press. The House Republican campaign arm is running ads against Houck, who trailed Fitzpatrick in the fundraising quarter but has grassroots backing.

Fitzpatrick has been in this situation before. He handily defeated a pro-Trump Republican, Andy Meehan, in the 2020 primary and he’s beat Democrats who have for years been eyeing the seat, formerly held by his late brother Mike, cycle after cycle.

If he wins the primary, he’ll face Democrat and Iraq war veteran Ashley Ehasz, whom he defeated by nearly 10 points in 2022. She’s pushed back against Fitzpatrick’s claims that he’s a moderate.

“We don’t need Fitzpatrick to say he supports Donald Trump,” Ehasz said, “to know that he has done and will continue to do the former president’s bidding in Congress.”