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Democrats bullish about TV anchor Janelle Stelson’s chances against GOP Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania
Some of the town squares and tree-lined streets in south central Pennsylvania are political battleground areas, and they look the part. On Keller Street, near St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Mechanicsburg, one lawn is jammed with blue Democratic campaign signs, but down the road from the busy Sheetz gas station in the 18th-century township of Mount Holly Springs, side-by-side red signs promote former President Donald Trump and GOP Rep. Scott Perry, who represents the 10th Congressional District.
Democrats are bullish on their prospects here, as both parties fixate on a number of potentially competitive races in the state. Republicans dismiss any thought that Perry, a six-term Republican and Army War College graduate, is truly vulnerable in November.
The 10th-District race has some distinctive features and unique candidate back stories that have thrust the race into the spotlight, even in a state that’s already saturated with high-stakes political races.
Kent Nishimura / Getty Images
Through the end of June, federal campaign finance records showed Perry with a large spending advantage for the entire cycle, compared to his Democratic challenger. But those latest filings also indicated Perry was trailing in cash on hand and his reelection bid, having directed a sizable amount of his campaign funding toward legal counsel.
Democrats found a high-profile challenger to run for the seat in Janelle Stelson. A newcomer to politics, she is a familiar face throughout the 10th District as a longtime television anchor on a powerhouse TV station based in York, Pennsylvania.
Photo by Joe Lamberti for The Washington Post via Getty Images
Stelson entered the race last October, putting her at the common disadvantage of lost time against an incumbent who had been able to fundraise for months before she declared her candidacy. And yet, from early April to the end of June, Stelson raised more than twice what Perry brought in during that same period of time.
Perry, who won the district by a comfortable 7 points in 2022, has cut a high profile with Republican colleagues. He was previously chair of the conservative House Freedom Caucus and his roots in Pennsylvania include studies at Penn State University and a stint in the station national guard. But Democrats sensed an opportunity to oust Perry after he came under scrutiny during Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.
The FBI briefly seized and copied data from Perry’s phone in 2022. He was also issued a subpoena by the House Jan. 6 select committee amid investigations into whether he helped try to install a Trump loyalist in the Justice Department to help Trump’s efforts.
Perry has denied any wrongdoing, and he was not prosecuted for defying the committee’s subpoena. But Democrats are emphasizing the scrutiny surrounding Perry as they seek to boost Stelson’s campaign.
“He’s been in power a long time, and I think people are hungry for something new,” Stelson told CBS News in between campaign stops in September. Along with other Democratic challenges in House races across the country, Stelson points to improving fundraising as evidence that she’s a formidable challenger.
“We were able to outraise the six-term incumbent last quarter by double, making the most vulnerable MAGA extremist in Congress even more vulnerable,” she said.
Democrats are touting Stelson’s competitive fundraising and her initial series of advertisements. In one ad, Stelson argued, “Perry is not for freedom. He’s all about his power.”
Heading into a party meeting in the basement of the Capitol in mid-September, Perry told CBS News, “I fight on behalf of the people that I represent. I think they know that, and I just tell my story.”
Perry also pushed back on a question about the subpoena and scrutiny he received during the House Jan. 6 probe.
“Let me characterize the question correctly, asking for an investigation — you term it otherwise — but asking for an investigation based on the wishes of my many, many, many constituents is an appropriate role for a member of Congress,” he said.
The National Republican Congressional Committee, the party’s House campaign arm, has targeted Stelson in its effort to preserve the Republican majority in the House.
“The Democrat Party left behind voters in Pennsylvania 10th District by embracing radical left-wing policies that drove up crime, the cost of living and unleashed chaos at the border,” an NRCC spokesman told CBS News “As they have in previous cycles, Pennsylvania voters will reject an out-of-touch Democrat who doesn’t even live in the district.”
The 10th District race is part of a multi-front political war the parties are fighting in Pennsylvania. The commonwealth is viewed as a decisive — if not the decisive — state in the 2024 presidential race. Republicans are touting their efforts to win a pair of competitive House races in the Wilkes-Barre and Lehigh Valley areas. Meanwhile, Sen. Bob Casey, a Democrat seeking his fourth term, is running a multi-million dollar campaign to fend off Republican Dave McCormick.
Republicans deny that the 10th District is truly as competitive as other Pennsylvania battleground races, but Stelson said the political complexion of the district is shifting.
“Hampden township in Cumberland County is one of the fastest growing areas in the entire state, and the folks who are coming in are bluer than the folks who have been there before,” she told CBS News.
Stelson’s unique background adds a variable to the race. As a longtime TV anchor on the local NBC affiliate station, Stelson has visibility that transcends that of other political candidates. She has emphasized her name recognition in campaign ads, speeches and in her interview with CBS News.
“If I haven’t been in your living room doing a story on you, chances are I have been in your living room on the TV,” she said. “So, being the trusted, nonpartisan voice for 38 years, I think people are responding well to that.”
The congressional race drew multiple appearances over the summer from Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat who has been an active surrogate for his party’s candidates, including Vice President Kamala Harris.
At a meeting of campaign volunteers in Harrisburg on Sept. 7, Shapiro lauded Stelson in a joint appearance. Earlier this summer, at an event in Cumberland County, he referred to Stelson as a “trusted voice.”
One of Perry’s fellow House Republicans expressed confidence in his reelection bid.
“He ran a very good race last time, and I think he’s doing the same thing now,” Rep. Lloyd Smucker told CBS News.
Mike Marinella, a spokesman for the NRCC, thinks that in the final days of the campaign, Democrats will be hard-pressed to invest significantly in Pennsylvania’s 10th District. He predicted, “Their resources will be spread thin, making it more of a challenge for them to be competitive in this district.”
AT&T is lowering curtain on its foray into the entertainment business, selling its majority stake in satellite TV provider DirecTV to private equity firm TPG Partners for $7.6 billion.
The deal, announced Monday, comes more than a decade after AT&T agreed to buy DirecTV for $48.5 billion, an acquisition that was designed to give the telecom giant a larger base of video subscribers and help it compete against rivals.
But since then, the subscription TV business has been hit by defections from “cord cutters,” or customers who have canceled their cable or satellite TV subscriptions in favor of streaming services such as Netflix. In 2021, following the loss of millions of customers, AT&T sold a 30% stake of the business to TPG in a deal valued at $16.2 billion.
“This sale allows AT&T to continue to focus on being the leading wireless 5G and fiber connectivity company in America,” AT&T said in a statement on Monday.
AT&T’s sale of its remaining 70% stake in DirecTV is expected to close in the second half of 2025.
Separately, DirecTV said it is acquiring satellite-TV provider Dish from EchoStar, a deal that also includes Sling TV, for $1 plus the assumption of roughly $9.8 billion in debt.
Shares of AT&T rose slightly before the market opened on Monday.
CBS News
Israeli strikes in Lebanon decapitate Hezbollah, but as civilian deaths mount, neither side backs down
Beirut, Lebanon — Israel expanded its airstrikes on Iran-backed groups in Lebanon and beyond over the weekend, launching raids thousands of miles away on Yemen’s Houthi rebels. The Israeli attack on Houthi targets in the Yemeni port city of Hodeida came after months of U.S. and British strikes against the group – a joint response to the rebels’ regular rocket, drone and missile attacks on international military and commercial vessels in the Red Sea.
The Israeli strikes also came, however, amid growing concern that Israel’s nearly-year-long war with the Houthi’s ideological allies Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah in Lebanon could spiral into a broad regional conflict, drawing in Iran and even the U.S. to back their respective allies.
Israel hit the Houthis just a couple days after it assassinated Hezbollah’s longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah with a massive airstrike on Friday.
After that strike, Israeli forces continued pounding purported Hezbollah and Hamas targets across Lebanon’s south and east all weekend, but the southern Beirut suburb of Dahiyeh, the Hezbollah stronghold where Nasrallah was killed along with another senior commander and two other high-ranking members of the group, has borne the brunt.
Aziz Taher/REUTERS
The well-armed group’s surviving deputy leader Naim Qassem vowed Monday that Hezbollah would carry on – despite its near decapitation via airstrikes, and before that exploding pagers and walkie talkies – “facing the Israeli enemy to support Gaza and Palestine.”
He accused the U.S. of offering Israel “limitless support” for Israel to carry out “massacres” in Lebanon and Gaza, and then claimed Hezbollah had fired even more weapons at Israel, and deep into the country, since Nasrallah was killed.
But Hezbollah’s incessant drone and rocket fire is virtually wiped out by Israel’s advanced air defenses before it reaches any targets. There have been civilians injured over the last couple weeks, but in Lebanon’s capital, entire residential buildings have been flattened.
CBS News went to see the aftermath of one Israeli strike Sunday on the edge of Dahiyeh. A five-storey-building was reduced to rubble. It was still smoldering as another massive boom reverberated in the distance, underscoring the unpredictable security situation for Lebanese civilians as Israel carries on, determined, it says, to push Hezbollah many miles away from its border to stop the cross-border attacks.
Getty/iStockphoto
Israel has assassinated at least five Hezbollah commanders over the past week alone, and 19 in just a few months — dealing a major blow to the U.S.-designated terrorist group. Hezbollah ramped up its attacks on Israel a day after Israeli forces launched their first airstrikes on its Hamas allies, in immediate response to Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre.
Hezbollah has acknowledged losing more than 30 operatives in recent weeks, including many of its senior leaders, but the ferocity and pace of the Israeli strikes in Lebanon has also taken a massive toll on Lebanese civilians. At least 1,000 people have been killed in just two weeks — 105 on Sunday alone.
According to Lebanon’s Prime Minister Najib Mikati, the strikes have displaced almost 1 million people from their homes, most of them fleeing southern Lebanon for Beirut of other locations further north.
Some of those displaced families — including many with young children — have come to Beirut’s iconic Blue Mosque, desperate to find safety. The place of worship has become a refuge for people who told CBS News they’d rather sleep in the courtyard’s surrounding the building, out in the open, than go back to their neighborhoods amid Israel’s bombardment.
Samar al-Attrash is among those who have found sanctuary outside the mosque. She fled her home in Dahiyeh with her husband and their three children, and little more than the clothes on their backs.
CBS News
“We have nowhere to go to but here,” the mother told us. “We are very scared and we can’t go back to Dahiyeh at all until the situation gets better.”
“I told my kids it’s scary and that we can’t go home,” she said. “I’m only telling [them] a little at a time so I don’t traumatize them.”
President Biden reiterated his warning on Sunday that an all-out regional war must be avoided, but as he spoke, CBS News correspondent Chris Livesay and his team reported that tanks and armored vehicles were massing on the Israeli side of the country’s northern border with Lebanon.
IDF handout
On Monday, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant paid another visit to Israeli troops waiting for orders near the border, telling them killing Nasrallah was, “an important step, but it is not the final one.”
“We will employ all of our capabilities,” Gallant told the Israeli troops, “and this includes you.”
It was the latest clear signal that Israel is preparing for some kind of ground operation in Lebanon — a move that has the potential to spark fighting even deadlier than anything seen since Oct. 7.
Despite the body blows dealt by Israel, Hezbollah’s deputy leader claimed Monday that the group’s “military capabilities are solid,” that it “will continue along the same path” it has been on for months – and that it is ready for a war with Israel.
contributed to this report.
Washington — Sen. JD Vance of Ohio and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz — both relative newcomers to the national political spotlight — face off Tuesday in the only scheduled vice-presidential debate before the November election.
The debate is being held three weeks after former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris had their only scheduled debate.
Walz, who is Harris’ running mate, has had a long career in politics but was largely unknown to voters outside of Minnesota before he joined the Democratic ticket.
Vance, the author of “Hillbilly Elegy,” was first elected to office in 2022 — less than two years before being selected by Trump to be his running mate.
Here’s what to know about the debate.
What time will the VP debate start and end?
The debate starts at 9 p.m. ET on Tuesday. It will run 90 minutes — the same length as the two presidential debates — and end at 10:30 p.m. ET.
Who is moderating the VP debate?
“CBS Evening News” anchor and managing editor Norah O’Donnell and “Face the Nation” moderator and chief foreign affairs correspondent Margaret Brennan will moderate the debate.
Where is the VP debate?
The debate is taking place at the CBS Broadcast Center in New York City.
Trump was a lifelong resident of New York City, a Democratic stronghold, before changing his voter registration and primary residence in 2019 to Palm Beach, Florida, where his golf club Mar-a-Lago is located.
In 2020, Trump lost New York to President Biden by more than 20 points, but the former president insisted during a recent campaign event on Long Island that he could win the state this year.
“When I told some people in Washington, ‘I’m going up to New York, we’re doing a campaign speech,’ they said, ‘What do you mean New York? You can’t ever — nobody can win. Republicans can’t win. I said, ‘I can win New York, and we can win New York.’ We’re going to win,” Trump said.
What are the rules for the debate?
Both campaigns agreed to a 90-minute debate with two four-minute commercial breaks. Campaign staff are not allowed to interact with the candidates during the breaks.
There will be no audience — a measure also implemented during the two previous presidential debates.
At the event’s start, the moderators will introduce the candidates in order of incumbent party, with Walz coming first. There will be no opening statements.
Walz will stand behind the lectern on the left side of the stage, which will be on the right side of viewers’ screens. Vance will be at podium on the right side of the stage, but the left side of screens.
Candidates, who cannot bring pre-written notes or props on stage, will have two minutes to answer a question and two minutes to respond. They will be allowed one minute for rebuttals. At moderators’ discretion, candidates may get an additional minute to continue a discussion.
Unlike the presidential debates, a candidate’s microphone will not be muted when their opponent is speaking, but CBS News reserves the right to turn off the microphones.
Vance won a virtual coin toss on Thursday, opting to go second with his closing statement. Each candidate will have two minutes for their closing remarks.
No topics or questions will be shared with the campaigns in advance.
How can you watch the VP debate on cable?
CBS will air debate coverage starting at 8 p.m. ET on its broadcast stations and affiliates. Find your local station here.
Besides CBS, the debate will simulcast on a number of other broadcast and cable networks. Check your local listings.
How can you stream the VP debate without cable?
It will also be streamed on all platforms where CBS News 24/7 and Paramount+ are available, including CBSNews.com and YouTube.
Debate coverage on CBS News 24/7 begins at 4 p.m. ET.
