Justin Douglas is used to being an underdog.
When he ran for Dauphin County Commissioner in 2023, he was a long shot. But he marshalled a brigade of volunteers and, running on a platform of reforming the county prison, won election as one of two Democrats on the three-seat board.
Now, he is an underdog once again, challenging Janelle Stelson in the May 19 Democratic primary in Pennsylvania’s 10th Congressional District for the right to try to unseat seven-term Republican US Rep. Scott Perry in November’s midterm election.
“I’m familiar with being the underdog,” he said.
In this primary, he faces a formidable opponent. Stelson has name recognition, having spent three decades in the living rooms of the district’s voters as a reporter and anchor for WGAL and having come within 1.2 percentage points of defeating Perry in 2024, the closest challenge Perry has faced since being elected to Congress in 2006.
Douglas’ underdog role is also reflected in fundraising.
Stelson raised $4.37 million in the first three months of 2026, according to Federal Election Commission filings, and has $3.17 million on hand. Douglas, according to his campaign’s filing, raised $121,880 – all from small donors; he refuses to take money from political action committees – and had $11,104 on hand at the end of the quarter. (Perry had $2.295 million in his campaign account, according to the March 31 filing.)
Stelson has picked up endorsements from Gov. Josh Shapiro, Lt. Gov. Austin Davis and a number of state representatives, including York’s Carol Hill-Evans, and has the support of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Douglas has been endorsed by CASA in Action, the political arm of the immigrant and minority advocacy group CASA; One Pennsylvania, which represents working-class Black communities; and the Asian Pacific Islanders Political Alliance.
Stelson focused on Perry
While Douglas is focused on Stelson, critical of her for not engaging his campaign in a debate, Stelson is focused on Perry. “I’ve been looking forward to unseating Scott Perry since I left the job I loved,” she said.
Douglas is the more progressive candidate, saying, “We’re at a crossroads in America right now.”
He got into the race after witnessing the detention and deportation of refugees from Bhutan and Nepal in Dauphin County. “It was heartbreaking,” he said. “I saw how heartless these policies were.”
The conduct of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, he said, was “abhorrent,” and he supports reforming the immigration system by first abolishing ICE, an agency that he believes has strayed from its mission. He believes that the immigration system is broken and needs serious reforms to make it more “humane” and “transparent” and to provide those caught in the system with due process under the law, as guaranteed by the Constitution.
Stelson is somewhat in agreement. She believes that the United States needs border protection, but that the laws need to be reformed to fix a broken system. She also believes that the killings of two US citizens in Minnesota at the hands of ICE agents should be fully investigated and that there should be accountability for the deaths.
Both Douglas and Stelson believe that affordability is the top issue in the campaign. Douglas believes the country needs an FDR-type overhaul, an adoption of President Franklin Roosevelt’s workers bill of rights, providing for health care, paid leave and the right of all Americans to earn a living wage. He believes in easing the tax burden of middle-class Americans by making the wealthy pay their fair share.
Stelson believes that reforms are needed to ease the burden on the middle class. She also advocates policies that she said would reduce the cost of health care, noting that Perry voted for eliminating subsidies for those who bought insurance through the Affordable Care Act, resulting in large premium increases. Douglas, for his part, believes health care is a right and favors universal health care – Medicare for all.
They both oppose the war in Iran and believe that the tax dollars being spent on the conflict could better be spent at home.
“We have so many people at home talking about what they need to make their lives more affordable,” Stelson said, noting that Perry favors “spending $20 billion to bail out Argentina, $700 billion to buy Greenland” and the billions being spent in waging the war in Iran.
She said Perry has voted consistently “to hurt (his constituents) rather than help them.”
She said Perry’s support of President Donald Trump’s tariffs is among those things – tariffs that are essentially a tax on Americans. Stelson pointed out a recent visit Perry paid to a Cumberland County manufacturer in which the general counsel of the company said the tariffs have affected the company’s customers. Perry defended the president’s trade policies.
She also mentioned Perry’s role in the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection – a role that resulted in the FBI seizing his cell phone – “trying to throw out all of our votes” as evidence that he is out of touch with the people he represents.
Stelson said she would listen to her constituents – something she did as a journalist – and “take their voices to Congress to accomplish what we need.”
