Army vet Ashley Ehasz challenges incumbent Republican Brian Fitzpatrick for Pa.'s 1st District seat

After a career of flying helicopters, Ashley Ehasz is hoping to cruise into the U.S. House of Representatives.

The Democratic candidate in Pennsylvania's 1st District is challenging three-term incumbent Brian Fitzpatrick. This campaign is the Army veteran's first.

The 1st District represents all of Bucks County and a small group of communities just over border in Montgomery County.

A resident of Bensalem, Ehasz enlisted at the age of 17 — a choice that required a waiver due to her young age — and attended the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. After graduation, a posting at Fort Rucker in Alabama and flight school came next. 

She trained to pilot Boeing AH-64 Apache attack helicopters, the only woman in her class, and later deployed these skills in Kuwait, Iraq and South Korea. Ehasz led two aviation troops before ending her military service, using the GI Bill to obtain her masters degree from the University of Oxford.

More recently, Ehasz worked as a policy writer and project coordinator for Marion County, Florida, tasked with implementing the CARES Act on a county level. She has since returned to Pennsylvania.

Ehasz has positioned herself the abortion-rights candidate in the 1st District race, in contrast to Fitzpatrick, who has supported abortion restrictions in the past and voted against the Women's Health Protection Act in 2021. "I did not fight for my country overseas only to become a second-class citizen here at home," she told the Bucks County Courier Times recently.

Climate change, which she views as a "national security issue," is another priority for Ehasz, who supports incentives for green tech jobs and wants to reduce the carbon footprint of the U.S. military. She also aims to raise the minimum wage to $15, implement universal background checks for gun owners and codify the DREAM Act into federal law.

Styled as a straight shooter, Ehasz has made her direct approach known from her first ad.

"If you had told 8-year-old me, living alone with my struggling mom, bouncing from house to house, with nothing but water to put in my cereal, that one day I'd be flying Apaches, I would've told you to f*** off," she says in the video. "As a kid, I never understood why my parents had it so tough, but now I know. I'm angry at a system that never really gave them a shot."

"Anger focused at a system designed to hold us down is the only way to change things."

More information on Ehasz's background and platform can be found at her campaign website.