It’s 2026 now. The race for the Democratic nomination to face Ryan Mackenzie will begin to heat up now, and it appears to be expanding. According to Bernie O’Hare, we have two new candidates in the race- Independent Michael Ramon Granados Jr. and Democrat Aiden Alexander Gonzales are entering the fray. Bernie writes of Gonzales:

Gonzalez already has a website that sticks to bread-and-butter issues like jobs, the economy, housing and healthcare. He supports the American Health Act, which places all US citizens in a single-payer system. He also wants to incentivize real estate development (can you say tax breaks) and make it more difficult for foreign buyers to purchase real estate. 

I don’t have word yet that he is running on David Hogg’s Super Pac’s slate, but that is a rumor. He is running on “Medicare for All,” a currently unfinanced plan to put all Americans on a single health care plan together. So that’s possible. As for Granados, the word is that he’s a Republican hatched Trojan horse to crack the Latino vote in the Lehigh Valley even more than it already is. That’s also just a rumor for now.

What’s more than a rumor is Republican Ryan Crosswell’s Q4 fundraising numbers- he reportedly raised $440k in the fourth quarter. That will put him at $1.1 million plus raised to date, an impressive number. Crosswell had been spending almost 40% of his money though, so figure he spent around $160,000 in Q4 and should have around $610k on hand after this. That’s going to be the most money in the field. Is that enough to protect him from Crooksy’s oncoming attacks on Crosswell for being from out of the area and being a Republican? Maybe. Maybe not. Crosswell might be a Republican, a union buster, and- oh just forget it.

Then there’s Bob “Crooksy” Brooks. I have no idea what he raised yet, but he’s going to be substantially behind Crosswell in cash on hand is my bet. Bob’s not very good with money, especially other people’s money. He may not be very good with his own either. Bernie O’Hare reports on his very shady financial disclosure report, and boy, it fits the pattern-

Robert Brooks. –  reports assets and unearned income of at least $963,000. This includes a residential rental property valued at between $250,000 and $500,000 and the stocks in multiple mutual funds.  He reports salaries of $20,000 from Bethlehem and $50,000 from the Pa Professional Firefighter’s Ass’n, as well as business income of $15,000 from his lawn care business. 

He reports debt of between $380,000 and $850,000 based on a residential mortgage, an investment property mortgage, and outstanding debt to Darrell and Linda Crook. He failed to list a $130,000 judgment owed to Carol Wiley, his former mother-in-law, since 2022. 

A title search of Northampton County records reveal that Brooks owns no real estate under his own name, nor is there any recorded mortgage in which he is listed. 

Something is very fishy about Brooks’ disclosure.

Ok, so the guy who stiffed his mother-in-law out of $55,000 owns no real estate and has no mortgage, but he reports both a mortgage and a residential rental property in his report. He also doesn’t list the court ordered debt that he still hasn’t paid back to his former mother-in-law, but you know, that’s just a divorce gone bad, right? There’s always an excuse…

This guy is a ticking time bomb. If Democrats nominate him, Mackenzie and the NRCC will crack his entire life open and leave all of the worst parts out in the open for the public to see, with tens of millions of dollars of spending to make sure you see them. This would be an epic “own goal” of political malpractice.

The race continues…