Psychologist enters race for 18th District seat formerly held by Tim Murphy
Yet another Democrat has entered the race to replace former Congressman Tim Murphy in Pennsylvania’s 18th District: Rueben Brock.
A seat in the House of Representatives, he said in a statement Friday, “has become a position that the wealthy and the political elite use to serve their own interests. I’d like to take that power and give it back to the people.”
Like Mr. Murphy, a Republican, the Cecil resident is a psychologist — though in an interview Mr. Brock said, “I feel like he stopped being a psychologist and started being a politician a long time ago. We’re trained to think about and care about people, and I don’t understand how a psychologist could vote the way he voted.”
Mr. Brock, a 41-year-old native of Washington, Pa., has a practice in McMurray and teaches at California University of Pennsylvania. He’s been meeting with committee members and raising money since mid-October: A GoFundMe page created for his campaign indicates he had crowdsourced more than $6,000 as of mid-morning Friday.
This would be Mr. Brock’s first run for office, though he said he’d been pondering it for a few years: “I’ve built up a name helping people, just by being in the social services, so this felt like a natural progression for me.”
He described himself as being fiscally conservative but one who “believes very much in a social safety net. Twenty years ago I was on welfare, and now I’m a doctor, paying more in taxes than I ever got from the system. And I believe we’ve got to invest in people.”
Mr. Brock enters an already crowded field — at least five other Democrats are running — but he is the only Democratic candidate from Washington County, which makes up a sizable chunk of a district that also includes portions of Allegheny, Greene and Westmoreland counties.
He is also the lone African-American candidate running on either the Democratic or Republican side. That might seem a daunting prospect in a nearly all-white district, and Mr. Brock allowed that, “I’ve wondered, ‘Can I get this job?’ ... But Democrats value diversity and inclusion, and I’d like to think that the working-class people in the 18th District will recognize that someone like me is closer to them than the wealthy white guy who has lived a privileged life.”
The fact that Donald Trump won the 18th District by roughly 20 points might seem to argue against that. But Mr. Brock said, “I really do believe a lot of people voted for him because they agree with me that politicians are the problem.”
In any case, he said, “We have to have a Congress that is a check and balance. If we let Trump have his way, we’re in trouble.”