A Q&A with Janelle Stelson

Janelle Stelson is hoping that the second time will be the charm this November when she takes on U.S. Rep. Scott Perry in Pennsylvania’s 10th Congressional District. A longtime news anchor for the central Pennsylvania TV station WGAL, Stelson nearly unseated Perry in 2024, but fell short by just 5,133 votes, with the incumbent winning reelection with 50.6% of the vote. 

With the winds of a favorable midterm election cycle at her back, Stelson has been laser-focused on affordability as she makes her case to PA-10 voters. In an interview with City & State, Stelson talked about the need for new representation in Washington, promising to make affordability her top priority, while also shining light on how she would approach foreign policy and aim to root out corruption if voters send her to Congress this fall.

The following conversation has been edited and condensed for length and clarity. 

If you win in November, what would your Day One priorities be? 

Well, I think my Day One priorities are Central Pennsylvania's Day One priorities. What I continue to hear from (voters) – whether it's a small business owner, or the police I visited with, or any other group, certainly the working unions – is affordability. In 2024, we called it affordability. Now I call it an economic crisis, because instead of complaining about high prices, people are being forced to make choices: Can they pay for their groceries and their utilities, or sending their son to the dentist? These things all matter to people –  groceries, utilities, a roof over your head, gas prices. The war in Iran that Scott Perry has voted five times for is really hurtful and disturbing to many of our family farms. We have record prices for diesel. They have to harvest their crops now, they have to use that diesel. So struggling farms are hurt even further, and add to that the cost of fertilizer, etc. – these are real problems around here. 

Affordability, right away, taking away the chaotic tariff taxes, which Scott Perry has repeatedly supported. Healthcare costs – it's not accessible; it's not affordable. We really need to take care of that. The other big thing I hear from folks is corruption. They're talking about term limits, age limits across the federal government – whether it's the Supreme Court or Congress or anybody else – and certainly not trading stocks with insider information that they and their families are privy to that the rest of us never get. They have profited greatly. I'm talking about both parties here. So those would be the top three: economic crisis, healthcare, and stanching the corruption. 

On healthcare, how do you plan to address affordability and access issues?

Well, I think we need to return to the Affordable Care Act subsidies while we get everything else figured out; millions of people across the country are getting rid of their healthcare because the premiums have gone up too high. I want to remind everybody that I am up against a seven-term incumbent, the former head of the Freedom Caucus, who voted against the government's ability to negotiate prescription drug prices with pharmaceutical companies. He lost – we got 10 drugs, including insulin, and we got it for Medicare-aged and older. But I would like to see us negotiate for far more drugs, and I'd love to see the age limits drop. So I think those are probably the two biggest things. 

You've laid out a whole platform centered around trust in government, things like term limits, some other pieces to address low trust levels, correct? 

Yes, and I think that's who I've been for a very long time. When your job is to listen to people in Central Pennsylvania, you get a pretty good feeling about what they want. I'm up against a congressman who has not held an in-person town meeting since 2019. He says we love the war in Iran, and I'm like, “Sir, you’ve got to come back to the district. That is not the case.” These record-breaking diesel fuel prices and fertilizer and gas for the rest of us – not to mention the death of our military men and women and injuries they have gotten in the war, and certainly the deaths of so many people in the Middle East. This is not OK. We don't love it, and Congressman Perry is once again very, very wrong. 

You've been outspoken about the war in Iran – how you would approach foreign policy as a Member of Congress?

Well, it's something I care deeply about and have for a long time. My grandparents were in the foreign service. My grandfather was an ambassador, and so I feel like I have public service in my DNA. Politics is something we always talk about around the table, and I think when you see somebody like Congressman Perry voting for $20 billion – well, people say between $20 and $40 billion – to bail out Argentina; when you see him offering $700 billion to buy Greenland – which is not for sale, congressman; when you see him again and again voting for the war in Iran … we could have been using that money for healthcare, to bolster Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid – all the things that we really need. Scott Perry votes against it and votes to send the money overseas instead of taking care of us here in Central Pennsylvania. I know that Scott Perry is just preparing to vote on a new bill – something that will become law to give Israel like the largest munitions it has ever gotten. 

What is your position on that conflict?

Well, Israel is a democratic nation and certainly our strongest ally in the region, and I am always looking out for Israel's future – and the people of Palestine absolutely have a right to exist. I understand that Hamas needed to be decimated after the Oct. 7 attacks and everything else they have done – sponsored by Iran. I share the concerns of what we're all seeing over there right now, and I will keep pressing for a two-state solution. We have to do better. 

One of my first jobs was writing speeches at the embassy of Egypt, and I have understood the Middle East since I was in my 20s from paying so much attention. It's somewhere where we need to do a lot of work. I look forward to sitting down in Congress with a lot of people who know a lot about the area and starting to deal with the issues. Diplomacy is very, very important. But what I'm really hearing from voters right now is how concerned they are about their costs. So people here aren't talking so much about the Middle East, but it's something I care very much about. 

Republican groups have tried to link you to socialism and the democratic socialist wing of the party. How would you respond to those characterizations?

Well, that's Scott Perry lying. I don't know any of those people. I have never met Bernie Sanders. I have never met AOC or any of the others that he is constantly tying me to. I don't know them. I know them from pictures. I certainly could say hello, but these are not people I know, and this is not something we deal with in this district. People have continued to be concerned about the cost of everything and about healthcare. This is not something they're talking to me about, so it's not an issue here and I don't think those people would be elected here. We have a plus-five Republican district with people who are very level-headed and care very much about their lives and their neighbors' lives – and those are the lives I care about. 

How would you be a different type of Member of Congress than Scott Perry? 

I think this is a simple one. It's all about listening and communicating. I've been listening for more than 30 years as a TV news journalist, and that's something I continue to do. The job title is representative – we have a lot of people in this district who don't think exactly what I think they think – and you carry their voices to the halls of Congress. When they ask you to do something, you figure out a way to try to make that happen. You carry their voices to Congress and try to get it done, and then you come back and communicate with them why or why not you could get it done. Does it need to be tweaked? Do we go back and try again, or is it something that just cannot happen for us? I think the listening and the communicating, and again, Scott Perry not having a town meeting in person for more than seven years – I mean, honestly, what cowardice is that that you're afraid to talk to the people who elected you and to pay to have you represent them? That's cowardice. I will never be that. I will always talk to people about what they need, what they want, and how we can accomplish it.