Copyright The Philadelphia Inquirer
Pablo McConnie-Saad has never been elected to office — and he thinks that could be an advantage in the crowded race to fill retiring U.S. Rep. Dwight Evans’ seat next year. In fact, he’s making sticking it to the Harrisburg lawmakers also running for the seat part of his campaign pitch. “Harrisburg politicians they’ve been there for a decade and this is where we are,” McConnie-Saad told The Inquirer in an interview ahead of his campaign announcement Tuesday. “There have been opportunities for them to bring new ideas and I think now the district has shown they’re hungry for something else.” Three state lawmakers are already running in the 3rd Congressional district, the most Democratic seat in Pennsylvania, which covers much of Philadelphia. It may seem an unlikely opener from McConnie-Saad, who is a former Biden administration staffer. The 39-year-old worked as a policy adviser for the U.S. Treasury Department during Joe Biden’s presidency and formerly worked for Democrats in the Delaware State House. The Bella Vista resident said he’s running to connect good middle class policies he spent a career working on to actual improvements in the city he grew up in. McConnie-Saad grew up in South Philadelphia with his parents and three brothers. His parents, who moved here from Puerto Rico, worked hard to provide for the family but the six of them slept in one room and bounced between rental apartments — moving six times by the time he’d turned 17. McConnie-Saad looks around the city today and feels like things haven’t gotten much better, he told The Inquirer. He’s a married working professional with a child on the way, who still can’t afford a house here, and he knows people across the city are struggling with far worse. “Life was hard growing up but that was 30+ years ago and things are still hard. We’ve put a lot of faith in the same leaders and haven’t got a lot back,” he said. The crowded field includes State Sen. Sharif Street and State Reps. Morgan Cephas and Chris Rabb. Ala Stanford, a prominent doctor and public health advocate, is running, with Evans’ endorsement. Another doctor, David Oxman, an intensive care doctor at Jefferson, is running, as are two other political newcomers: Robin Toldens, a real estate agent and former city employee, and Karl Morris, a Temple University computer science professor. The primary is shaping up to be Philadelphia’s first competitive Democratic congressional primary in close to a decade. In the months ahead, candidates will start trying to break through, and to compete in what could be an expensive contest. In his campaign launch video, McConnie-Saad wears an Eagles hoodie and laments that “rents are still too high, and there still aren’t enough good jobs and another Street is running for office.” He also blames Harrisburg for not being able to get a budget done. “Philly has history, character, the best sports teams and fans,” he says. “We have the coolest neighborhoods and even cooler people but we’re all struggling to get ahead. If you think our politicians from Harrisburg deserve a promotion‚ I’m probably not your guy. We need someone with a backbone to fix our problems.” Despite hardships growing up, McConnie-Saad said his parents instilled a strong work ethic. He received a scholarship to attend Germantown Friends School. After graduating from Oberlin College, he went on to work for the Delaware State House of Representatives’ Democratic Caucus. He later earned a doctorate in public policy from the University of Delaware, where he went on to work at the Biden Institute. McConnie-Saad’s work there focused on the declining middle class. He worked at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, where he helped implement parts of Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. McConnie-Saad is a self-described progressive who emphasizes in his launch that he’ll “stop the abuse from ICE,” a topic that is personal to him. Growing up, he said he remembers watching police raid his Philadelphia home and hold his father at gunpoint as he was falsely accused of being a drug dealer. Democrats have been divided on how to respond to Trump’s immigration enforcement tactics. McConnie-Saad didn’t pull punches saying “hatred against immigrants echoes in Trump’s words and has been weaponized by ICE to terrorize our community.”
