Priorities

Pennsylvania lost more than 10,000 farms in the past decade. Bankruptcies went up 160% last year alone.

It isn’t because farmers stopped working hard. Fertilizer up. Fuel up. John Deere decided farmers couldn’t even fix their own tractors without calling a dealer first and paying a fee.

The 150-acre dairy farm your neighbor has been running his whole life is getting squeezed out. Another building sits empty. Another family loses what they spent generations building.

Glenn Thompson has chaired the House Agriculture Committee for the past seventeen years. He calls himself a descendant of dairy farmers. Since Thompson took the Agriculture chair in 2023, Pennsylvania has been the only major dairy state where farm closures have gone up every single year. On his watch, The Farm Bill gave family farms around twelve hundred dollars a year in subsidy payments while the top one percent walked away with nearly a hundred times more. That’s his record. 

Ray Bilger grew up in Bellefonte. He left to find work because the opportunity wasn’t here, and he came back because he believes it should be. When he returned, he found that for most families in this district, nothing has changed. That’s why he’s running.

In Congress, Ray will vote for the Agricultural Right to Repair Act. He’ll protect crop insurance. And he’ll fight to bring tariff decisions back to Congress, because right now, farmers are paying for trade wars they had no vote in.

Washington has had seventeen years to get this right. Ray will.

Pennsylvania is the second largest natural gas producer in the country. That means jobs, revenue, and energy that keeps the lights on and the heat running for families across this district. The people who do that work built something real here. They deserve a congressman who actually says so.

Ray believes in a simple rule: if you do business in Pennsylvania, you play by our laws. The problem isn’t the industry, it’s what happens when companies cut corners and nobody holds them accountable. In 2025, a natural gas company contaminated drinking water in Cameron County. People who worked their entire lives to afford their homes couldn’t trust what came out of their own taps. Worse yet, the company kept drilling even after regulators told them to stop. When corporations prioritize profit over human lives, Washington needs to be on the side of the people whose water went bad, not the corporation that caused it.

Ray believes if companies use Pennsylvania’s resources to make money, they owe this community something in return. He’ll push for stronger oversight, real consequences for violations, and making sure the benefits of energy production stay here – in jobs, in tax revenue, and in investment.

He also believes the energy economy is changing, and PA-15 workers should be first in line for what’s coming next. Two thirds of Pennsylvania’s 104,000 clean energy workers are in construction and manufacturing – the kind of work this district has always done. Veterans make up one in ten of that workforce. Ray believes those jobs belong here. Nobody should have to leave PA-15 to find them.

Pennsylvania’s energy belongs to Pennsylvanians. Ray will fight to keep it that way.

On May 17, 2026 Bradford Regional Medical Center stopped being a hospital.

No emergency room. No inpatient care. No place to go if your heart stops, if you’re in a car accident, if you’re about to have a baby. The closest emergency room is now across the state line in New York — half an hour away on a good day.

The hospital’s own CEO told you why. ‘Federal funding cuts,’ he said. Not mismanagement. Not bad luck. Federal funding cuts.

McKean County Commissioner Marty Wilder said it plainly: ‘Rural communities are under assault. Once Medicaid cutbacks kick in, it’s going to become real for a lot of people in a lot of towns.’

He’s right. And Glenn Thompson voted for those Medicaid cutbacks. He voted against the healthcare tax credits that help rural hospitals keep their doors open. He voted to shift billions in costs onto states that can’t absorb them.

Then he said nothing. Not a word about Bradford. Not a press release. Not a town hall. Nothing.

Northwestern Pennsylvania already has an eight-county maternity care desert. Women in this district are already driving hours to give birth. And our congressman’s response is silence.

Ray Bilger  grew up in rural PA. He  came back here and he is not going to be silent about what’s happening to this community.

Glenn Thompson had sixteen years to fight for rural healthcare in this district. Bradford Regional Medical Center closed on his watch.

It’s time for a change.

Tax Credits

Healthcare shouldn’t be a luxury. But that’s exactly what Glenn Thompson made it for thousands of his own neighbors.

For the past four years, enhanced tax credits through Pennsylvania’s health insurance marketplace — Pennie — helped 500,000 Pennsylvanians afford coverage. In our district alone, those credits kept thousands of families insured who couldn’t have managed otherwise.

Congress had a chance to extend those credits. The vote was 230 to 196. Seventeen Republicans crossed the aisle and voted yes. Even Republicans from other parts of Pennsylvania voted yes. Glenn Thompson voted no.

The result? Premiums doubled overnight. In Cameron County, premiums jumped 160% — $229 more every single month. In Forest County, 129% — $184 more every month. In Warren County, 139% — $168 more every month. Real money, for families already stretched thin.

Thousands of people in this district lost their health coverage. One in four Pennie enrollees in PA-15 simply couldn’t afford it anymore and walked away.

Glenn Thompson had one job — protect the people of this district. He chose differently.

Ray Bilger will make the right decision.

Ray Bilger wants to help the rural communities of the 15th District thrive and grow. 

Without job opportunities, younger residents are leaving their hometowns. This leaves an older population that tends to need more services, but the economic base is insufficient to support those services. While some may say the residents can just move, that ignores their deeply rooted connection to their community. Maintaining this connection and pride in place requires extensive work.

One of the areas on which  Ray will spend significant time is developing legislation to encourage small business development, including farms, commercial businesses, health care facilities, small manufacturing operations, local banks, and more.

Ray Bilger left Central Pennsylvania once. He knows why young people leave — because opportunity feels like it exists somewhere else. And he knows what it feels like to come back and find that not much has changed.

That’s the quiet crisis nobody in Washington talks about. Young people leave for jobs. That leaves an older population that needs more services — healthcare, transportation, housing — but a shrinking tax base that can’t pay for them. And when someone suggests the solution is for everyone to just move away, they’ve never stood in a town where their grandparents are buried, where their kids went to school, where their neighbors have known them their whole lives.

This district doesn’t need to be abandoned. It needs investment.

When Ray gets to Washington, one of his top priorities will be legislation that makes it easier to start and grow a business right here — small manufacturers, farms, local banks, healthcare facilities, and the small commercial businesses that are the backbone of every town in this district. Small business incubators that have already worked in Centre and Clearfield counties can be a model for the entire district.

Glenn Thompson has represented this district for sixteen years. In that time, young people kept leaving and rural economies kept shrinking. Good intentions aren’t enough. It’s time for someone who came back because he believes this place is worth fighting for.

Ray Bilger does.

Ray Bilger is  a gun owner and a veteran, and believes in the Second Amendment — full stop. Like the nearly one million Pennsylvania hunters and gun collectors, firearms are part of Ray’s  life and his  family’s way of life.. (Ask him about his Colt Woodsman some time)

 Ray also believes in responsibility , a value shared by the vast majority of gun owners. That’s why  Ray supports making sure background checks work the way they’re supposed to : keeping guns out of the hands of criminals and out of the hands of people who pose a danger to themselves and others, while never punishing law-abiding citizens for doing things right.

While Glenn Thompson votes the NRA line. Ray Bilger is a gun owner who believes in common sense gun laws.

Our veterans risked their lives to defend our freedom. While we can never offer enough thanks for that sacrifice, our current system has somehow found a way to offer far less. Today, hundreds of veterans in Pennsylvania and thousands more across the country are homeless; millions face the burden of opioid addiction, dying at twice the national rate from it. Worse still, access to medical care is blocked by bureaucratic hurdles that serve only to enrich private insurers on the backs of those who served. . Enough is enough,  the broken promises must end. As a Veteran himself, Ray Bilger will push back against VA cuts that delay treatment. Ray will keep private equity from standing between veterans and their care and not let corporations turn a profit by denying veterans care.

America’s children are its future. The only way that future can succeed is through a strong public school system, from elementary school to college. To give students the best possible start, we must continue to invest in educators to ensure top talent is incentivized to teach. 

In thousands of schools across Pennsylvania and the nation, there is a shortage of qualified STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math)  teachers. Yet under Glenn Thompson’s watch,  federal grants meant to attract expert teachers to rural schools were significantly cut. While he claims to support education, his record shows he is willing  to hollow it out in the name of saving a few dollars. 

Ray Bilger believes our community deserves better. In Congress, he will fight to expand grants to keep top talent in Pennsylvania.He will stand firmly against  funding cuts that threaten to shutter critical  research being done at Penn State, and will ensure that our children have every advantage we can give them as they grow and learn.

Congress’s job should be to make everyone’s lives better, but their actions only make their wealthy donors’ lives and their own bank accounts better. I support a ban on members of congress trading stocks, closing the revolving door between congressman and lobbyist, and overturning Citizen’s United. 

Most people in this district work hard, play by the rules, and trust that their representatives  are doing the same. Too often, that trust is broken.

Here’s how Washington really works. Members of Congress get access to information the rest of us don’t have — then trade stocks based on it. When they finish their terms, nearly half of them cash in and become high-paid lobbyists, their salaries jumping over 1,000 percent overnight. And thanks to Citizens United, corporations and billionaires pour unlimited dark money into campaigns to make sure the people they want get elected and stay elected.

The result is a Congress that works for its donors, not for you.

This isn’t a partisan issue, it’s a corruption issue. That’s why Ray Bilger supports a ban on congressional stock trading,  legislation already introduced by Republican Congressman Chip Roy of Texas. Ray will ban the revolving door between Congress and K Street and will support overturning Citizens United.

Ray will also practice what he preaches. He supports a constitutional amendment limiting House members to six terms — twelve years. Glenn Thompson is seeking his tenth term in 2026. He has been in Congress for eighteen years. Ray Bilger will limit himself to six.

It’s time for a Congress that works for the people of this district — not one that works for itself

Right now, Pennsylvania is in the middle of a data center boom. Trillion-dollar tech corporations are moving into rural communities like ours, promising jobs and tax revenue while consuming millions of gallons of water from local aquifers every single year. They are driving electricity prices higher for every family on the grid, with capacity prices in our region already jumping 860% in a single year. In return, these massive facilities create roughly 30 to 50 permanent jobs per site.

What frustrates Ray Bilger most is the contradiction at the heart of this development. These companies want to build the backbone of the internet right here in Central Pennsylvania, yet 276,000 Pennsylvania households still cannot get reliable broadband internet. Families in PA-15 are getting the bill for someone else’s server farm while they cannot stream a video reliably at home. Data centers can be good for PA-15, Ray says, but only if we set the rules. Right now, nobody in Washington is setting those rules on our behalf. It is absurd that companies building the future of AI want to operate in communities that cannot even get a reliable signal. That ends when Ray goes to Congress.

Glenn Thompson has chaired the House Agriculture Committee, which holds jurisdiction over rural broadband and USDA water programs, for years. On this issue, his record is absolute silence. He has offered no legislation, held no hearings, and provided nothing to protect local residents. Our communities are not a sacrifice zone for big tech.

Ray spent 35 years working in and around the very infrastructure these companies are building, serving from the Air Force to the NSA, where he was the Technical Director for Cyber Analysis. He knows what these facilities need, and he knows what they owe the communities they move into. If elected, Ray will fight for five enforceable federal priorities: broadband co-investment as a condition of federal tax benefits, mandatory Community Benefit Agreements, water transparency requirements, strict clean air standards for backup generators, and ratepayer protection to shield families from data center demand.

Ray is a leader who knows how to fix things. Let us send him to Washington to fix this.