Pa.'s 7th District: Ryan Mackenzie's campaign issues cease and desist over Bob Brooks mental health bill campaign ad; Brooks stands by ad claims

Lindsay Weber, The Morning Call on Oct 27, 2026

Published in Political News

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ALLENTOWN, Pa. — Rep. Ryan Mackenzie’s legal team is calling on his opponent, Bob Brooks, to take down a campaign ad that Mackenzie asserts is “false” and “defamatory.”

Brooks’ campaign said in a statement that it stands by the ad and will not remove it from the air.

Mackenzie’s cease and desist letter comes just over one week after Brooks’ campaign issued a similar demand to Mackenzie’s campaign, over an ad which accused Brooks of violating state law by not holding workers’ compensation insurance for the employees of his lawn care company.

The ad Mackenzie’s campaign objects to features state Rep. Jennifer O’Mara, who accuses Mackenzie, while he was a state legislator, of standing against a state bill she sponsored that provides first responders with workers’ compensation for a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress injury.

“There was a bill to help get our first responders real mental health coverage,” O’Mara said in the ad. “Ryan Mackenzie fought us the whole time.”

Brooks lobbied in favor of the ad, O’Mara said in the video, which eventually became law in 2024.

Before being elected to Congress in 2024, Mackenzie served five terms as a Pennsylvania state representative in a Lehigh County district.

Mackenzie’s campaign calls the ad false and defamatory because Mackenzie voted for the bill when it passed the House in 2024. A letter from Mackenzie’s lawyer Britain Henry wrote “At no time in his legislative career did Congressman Mackenzie ever vote against PTSI workers’ compensation coverage for first responders.”

Mackenzie also convened a hearing in 2023 on the challenges facing first responders, where several firefighters called on lawmakers to classify post traumatic stress as an “occupational injury” that is entitled to workers’ compensation.

“It’s astonishing that Bob Brooks would claim that Ryan Mackenzie opposed mental health coverage for first responders while citing a bill that the congressman voted for,” said Mackenzie for Congress campaign manager Andres Weller in a statement.

In a statement, Brooks’ spokesperson Benny Stanislawski said the Brooks campaign stands by claims made in the ad.

“The ad will not be coming down,” Stanislawski said in a statement. “Ryan Mackenzie stonewalled efforts to pass PTSI benefits for firefighters and first responders while he was serving in Harrisburg, and only changed his tune once he decided he wanted to run for Congress.”

Even though Mackenzie voted in favor of the bill, Stanislawski claimed that Mackenzie and other Republicans allowed it to stall in the Labor and Industry Committee without being moved to the House floor for a vote in the 2019-20 and 2021-22 legislative sessions.

At the time, Republicans held a majority of seats in the state house and thus the party’s leaders had the final say on which bills receive a final vote from the full House of Representatives.

Mackenzie was vice chair of the Labor and Industry Committee in 2019-20, and a voting member of the committee in 2021-22.

Brooks’ campaign connected The Morning Call to Democratic state Rep. Tarik Khan, a co-sponsor of the bill, and Allentown firefighters union president Jeremy Warmkessel, who lobbied for it at the time.

Both Warmkessel and Khan claimed that Mackenzie and fellow Republicans declined to move the bill out of the Labor and Industry Committee for a vote on the House floor when Republicans held the House majority.

The bill did not receive a vote from the House Labor and Industry Committee in any legislative sessions in which it was introduced, according to state records.

Mackenzie’s lawyer, Britain Henry, disputes the claim that Mackenzie delayed the bill from becoming law in the cease and desist letter. According to the letter, Mackenzie, because he was not the Labor and Committee Chair, did not have the ability to call a vote on the workers compensation bill.

“The decision whether to schedule a bill for committee consideration rested with the Chair, not with Mackenzie, and Mackenzie could not have voted against a bill that never received a vote,” Henry wrote in the letter.

The bill eventually passed out of House Veterans Affairs and Emergency Preparedness Committee in 2024 before it received a vote on the House floor.