Susan Wild

Susan Wild (née Ellis) was born on June 7, 1957, at Wiesbaden Air Force Base in Hesse, West Germany, into a Jewish family. Her father, Norman Leith, was serving in the United States Air Force, and her mother, Susan Stimus Ellis, worked as a journalist. Because of her father’s military career, Wild spent parts of her childhood in several locations, including France, California, New Mexico, and Washington, D.C. This early exposure to diverse communities and international settings helped shape her worldview and later informed her interest in public service and national policy.

Wild’s engagement with politics began at a relatively young age. In 1976, she volunteered for Jimmy Carter’s presidential campaign, an experience that introduced her to electoral politics and the mechanics of national campaigns. She attended American University in Washington, D.C., graduating in 1978. She then pursued legal studies at George Washington University Law School, where she earned her Juris Doctor in 1982. During law school, she studied under noted public interest law professor John Banzhaf, further grounding her in legal advocacy and regulatory issues that would later intersect with her legislative work.

Following her admission to the bar, Wild embarked on a legal career in Pennsylvania. In 1999, she became a partner at the Allentown-based law firm Gross McGinley, where she developed a reputation as a skilled attorney. Her first bid for elected office came in 2013, when she ran unsuccessfully for county commissioner in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania. Two years later, in 2015, she was appointed solicitor of the City of Allentown, becoming the first woman to hold that position. As city solicitor, she served as the chief legal officer for the municipality until December 31, 2017, when she resigned to focus on a congressional campaign.

Wild entered the race to succeed retiring Republican U.S. Representative Charlie Dent in Pennsylvania’s 15th congressional district in the 2018 election. She won the six-candidate Democratic primary with 33% of the vote, narrowly defeating Northampton County district attorney John Morganelli. In the November 6, 2018 general election, she defeated Republican Lehigh County commissioner Marty Nothstein with 54.5% of the vote to his 43.5%. On the same day, she also ran in and won a special election to fill the remainder of Dent’s term in the old 15th district, receiving 130,353 votes to Nothstein’s 129,593. The closer margin in the special election reflected the more Republican-leaning configuration of the former 15th district, which had stretched from the Lehigh Valley into areas between Lebanon and Harrisburg by way of Berks County. After court-ordered redistricting, Wild became the U.S. representative for Pennsylvania’s newly drawn 7th congressional district, centered in the Lehigh Valley and including Allentown, Bethlehem, Easton, Bangor, and a portion of the Poconos. She was the first woman ever to represent the Lehigh Valley in Congress.

Susan Wild served as a Representative from Pennsylvania in the United States Congress from 2018 to 2025, completing four terms in office as a member of the Democratic Party. Her service in Congress occurred during a significant period in American history, and as a member of the House of Representatives she participated in the democratic process and represented the interests of her constituents in the Lehigh Valley region. In 2020, she ran for reelection to a second full term in the 7th district. Unopposed in the Democratic primary, she again faced Republican Lisa Scheller, a former Lehigh County commissioner, in the general election and won with 51.9% of the vote, a narrower margin than many observers had anticipated. Following the 2020 census, redistricting made her seat more competitive and added more rural areas, including Carbon County. Wild drew criticism from some district residents after remarking that Carbon County, which she described as a “very rural county” that had shifted from supporting Barack Obama to supporting Donald Trump, contained “exactly the kind of people who should not be voting for a Donald Trump” and that she might “have to school them on that a little bit.” In a 2022 rematch with Scheller, Wild again prevailed, this time by a 51% to 49% margin.

During her tenure, Wild developed a legislative profile aligned closely with the national Democratic leadership. She co-chaired the New Democrat Coalition Climate Change Task Force, reflecting a focus on environmental and climate policy within a centrist Democratic framework. She served as vice chair of the Congressional Labor and Working Families Caucus, emphasizing labor rights and economic security, and also as vice chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights and International Organizations, where she engaged with international human rights and global health issues. As of November 2022, she had voted in line with President Joe Biden’s stated positions 100% of the time, and in the 117th Congress she voted with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi 100% of the time, underscoring her consistent support for the party’s legislative agenda. In March 2020, she co-sponsored a bill to reauthorize the Older Americans Act for five years with a 35% increase in funding; President Donald Trump signed the measure into law that month. She also took positions on high-profile issues, including voting in July 2022 for H.R. 1808, the Assault Weapons Ban of 2022, which sought to prohibit various semiautomatic firearms, including AR-15-style rifles.

Wild was active on matters of ethics, foreign policy, and domestic extremism. In March 2021, she co-sponsored a resolution to expel Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene from Congress, arguing that Greene had “advocated violence against our peers, the Speaker and our government.” On foreign policy, she was sharply critical of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, whom she described as “far-right,” “misogynistic,” “homophobic,” and “anti-immigrant.” In March 2019, she joined 29 other Democratic lawmakers in a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo expressing alarm that Bolsonaro’s agenda threatened the rights of LGBTQ+ people, women, labor activists, minority communities, and political dissidents in Brazil, and warning that these developments endangered Brazil’s long-term democratic future. In 2023, she voted against H.Con.Res. 21, which would have directed President Biden to remove U.S. troops from Syria within 180 days, signaling support for maintaining a U.S. military presence there. In February 2023, she signed a letter urging President Biden to provide F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine, reflecting her backing for robust U.S. assistance to Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression.

In 2024, Wild sought reelection but was narrowly defeated by Republican Ryan Mackenzie, a Pennsylvania state representative, ending her service in the House in January 2025. Following her defeat in the 2024 election, she was identified as the source of media leaks from the House Committee on Ethics related to the committee’s investigation of former U.S. Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida. Coverage in The Hill emphasized that any leaks by members or staff violated the committee’s rules, which require individuals on the panel to swear an oath not to disclose unauthorized information. With the conclusion of her four terms, Wild’s congressional career was marked by her status as the first woman to represent the Lehigh Valley in Congress, her close alignment with Democratic leadership, her active role in climate, labor, and human rights issues, and her participation in the legislative process during a turbulent era in American politics.