Preston Nouri on incumbent Rep. Mike Kelly's tenure: 'What do we have to show for it?'

At only 25, Preston Nouri is running for the U.S. House of Representatives because he said he's tired of seeing his friends and neighbors get "left behind."

If Nouri, a Fairview resident, pulls off a major upset over seven-term U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly in a district that is considered safe for Kelly and Republicans, not only would he shock the political world, he also would become only the second member of Generation Z elected to the House.

Nouri, who declared his candidacy when he was still too young to hold the position, would follow in the footsteps of U.S. Rep. Maxwell Frost of Florida. The fellow Democrat became the first from Gen Z to win a House seat in 2022.

Pennsylvania Voter Guide: The who, what, where & when of the 2024 election

Nouri hopes it's his turn. Kelly's 16th District seat covers Erie, Crawford, Mercer, Lawrence and Butler counties and the western portion of Venango County. Nouri says Kelly has not brought back enough federal tax dollars to the district to make a lasting impact.

"I'm not saying he hasn't done anything, but here we are 14 years later and what do we have to show for it? (U.S. Reps.) Chris DiLuzio and Summer Lee are able to bring back a billion dollars to Pittsburgh in one appropriation cycle and over the last 14 years we haven't been able to amount to over $200 million. We cover five and a half counties. When it comes down to making real, actual impact to the people of western Pennsylvania, I've had the experience working at the Pentagon, making world-shaping decisions at my young age."

Nouri said he's tired of watching his neighbors struggle to find work that provides family-sustaining wages, like the manufacturing jobs his father held that didn't require a college degree. He's upset that the 16th District is home to one of the poorest ZIP codes in the nation, 16501 in the city of Erie, where the median household income is only $14,300 and 62% of residents live below the poverty line.

Who is Preston Nouri?

Nouri is a first-generation American whose father came to the U.S. from Iran before the Iranian Revolution in 1979. His mother was born in Erie after his grandmother moved to the U.S. from Poland, where she and most of her family were prisoners in Nazi Germany's Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp.

Nouri graduated from Fairview High School in 2017. He earned bachelor's degrees in political science and psychology from the University of Pittsburgh in 2021.

While attending college, Nouri worked for four months in 2018 as a legal intern in the City of Pittsburgh Planning Department's Americans with Disabilities Act Office, reviewing the city's compliance with the ADA and taking part in mediation sessions with various citizens groups. That July, he returned to Erie and served as a campaign specialist for local political candidates. In May 2019, Nouri began a four-month legal internship in the Erie County District Attorney's Office.

After graduation, Nouri moved to Washington, D.C., where he worked as a policy fellow for the Muslim Policy Affairs Council. From May 2021 to August 2021, he served as a legislative intern in the House of Representatives for Rep. Mondaire Jones of New York. He then had consecutive six-month stints as a security specialist for the U.S. Department of State and later as a program administrator for the Partnership for a Secure America.

Then, in July 2022, he became a legislative analyst for the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment. He left the job at the start of 2024 after a year and seven months in order to focus on his congressional campaign and running his business.

He is the founder and operator of a convenience store in Lawrence Park Township called Lawrence Park and Go.

Preston Nouri on inflation

Nouri's plan to address inflation, which began to rise in early 2020 as the COVID-19 crisis turned into a global pandemic, has a lot to do with securing more federal funding for the area.

Nouri specifically points to the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act of 2022. Western Pennsylvania, he said, would be an ideal place to stand up a new manufacturing plant for semiconductors, for example. The CHIPS and Science Act dedicated $53 billion in funding to bring semiconductor production back to the U.S., which in 1990 accounted for 40% of the global supply chain of semiconductors but now only produces 12%

The National Bureau of Economic Research, a private nonprofit, found three main drivers for increased inflation in the early stages of the pandemic: volatile energy prices, disruptions in the supply chain due to COVID-19 and price changes in auto-related industries. Inflation began to rise in early 2020.

"First and foremost, there's something that we can directly do without passing big pieces of legislation, and that is bring some money back into the district in the form of good-paying jobs," Nouri said. "If we got some more money in our pockets, then we're able to deal with the inflation in a more real way."

Nouri would support legislation that addresses corporate price gouging, lowers prescription drug prices and raises the national minimum wage to $15 an hour. He also backs the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, or PRO Act, which strengthens collective bargaining rights for workers and makes it easier for them to form a union. Nouri believes that helping working Americans close the wage gap with the wealthy, while also addressing predatory pricing practices will help stabilize the economy.

More: Nouri attacks Rep. Kelly for 'personally profiting from taxpayer dollars' with grant

Preston Nouri on abortion

Nouri said he would protect abortion rights by opposing any effort to enact a national ban. Instead, he would join other Democrats in trying to enshrine into law the same reproductive rights that Roe v. Wade guaranteed.

In June, on the two-year anniversary of the overturning of Roe v. Wade, Nouri called the court's ruling "one of the most dangerous decisions in the history of our nation."

Nouri then called Kelly "out of touch" with the American people because of his repeated sponsorship of the Heartbeat Protection Act, a bill that would effectively ban abortion nationwide by prohibiting the procedure after a heartbeat is detected, which usually occurs within six weeks, before most women know they are even pregnant.

"Mike Kelly is pushing a national abortion ban that is so extreme that he would force life-threatening pregnancies to be carried to term," Nouri said. "Kelly isn’t just out of touch, his legislation is dangerous for people here in Pennsylvania and across the country.”

Nouri also would protect access to contraception and other forms of reproductive health care.

Preston Nouri on immigration

Nouri blames Kelly, Trump and other Republicans for "tanking" a bipartisan border security bill negotiated by Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Lankford and Democrats. The $118 billion Emergency National Security Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2024 was believed to have had enough bipartisan support to pass, at least initially. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell had urged his conference to support it. Trump, however, was staunchly opposed to it.

Kelly blasted the bill for providing $60 billion in aid to Ukraine and another $14 billion for Israel, with $20.2 billion for border security. The legislation was "more of a foreign aid package than a border security package," he said in a statement Feb. 5.

"Everyone bipartisanly understands that we're dealing with a humanitarian disaster," Nouri said. "We've got disjointed policies spanning multiple administrations. There's nothing that's been actually formally passed by Congress since the '80s. We had a bipartisan package that was seen as a major concession by many Democrats and that was crafted by a very conservative senator from Oklahoma. But Mike Kelly and Trump in particular tanked the immigration package just so they could use it to score a political point."

Nouri said he would need to review the legislation if it's ever brought back up for a vote to see if it meets the border security needs at the time it's being reconsidered.

"I am interested in bipartisan packages that are directly able to tangibly handle a problem, whether it be similar measures to the one that we brought up, or other measures that we're able to get worked through and actually pass," he said.

Votes in Washington: See how Rep. Mike Kelly, Sen. John Fetterman and Sen. Bob Casey voted

Preston Nouri on foreign conflicts

One area where Nouri and Kelly find consensus is on America's financial obligations to foreign conflicts. Both say they support Ukraine in its ongoing war with Russia, for example, but worry that needs are not being met at home.

Nouri noted that the Federal Emergency Management Agency had spent $9 billion to respond to hurricanes Helene and Milton and yet at the same time had agreed to send Israel nearly $9 billion in military aid for its war with Hamas.

"We're running out of money here, but we always seem to have money for foreign conflicts," he said in early October. "It's just hypocritical when we need to take care of people, especially when right after Hurricane Helene we're heading into Hurricane Milton.

Nouri said the war in Gaza is creating one of the worst humanitarian crises ever and he is critical of both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Joe Biden. Netanyahu has offered only "platitudes" about bringing hostages home and reaching a ceasefire with Hamas, he said.

"We've seen the Biden administration multiple times being unable or not in the know from Netanyahu and his government about the strikes and the work that they're trying to do. We've seen (Secretary of State) Anthony Blinken go up and directly lie to Congress, that aid was being being sent into to help humanitarian efforts. We're seeing a humanitarian disaster on a scale that, I mean, quite frankly, I don't think most people in modern history have seen."

The only way, he said, to bring long-term peace to the region is through "humanitarian efforts, not increased money for bombs."

He expressed support for an arms embargo to Israel and noted that a majority of Americans do, too.

"We're talking about real, tangible change in a original war that could really spread very quickly," Nouri said. "And nobody here in the United States is looking for more war when we're not able to take care of basic necessities here at home."

Matthew Rink can be reached at [email protected] or on X at @ETNRink. 

This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: Democrat Nouri: Too many western PA residents 'left behind' by Kelly