Democrats are throwing everything at MAGA Rep. Scott Perry. This time they think it might work.

CAMP HILL, Pa. (AP) — Democrats have long sought to oust Rep. Scott Perry, the former chairman of the far-right Freedom Caucus and staunch Donald Trump ally, in this swing Pennsylvania district. But this time they believe they have a real chance with their candidate, Janelle Stelson.

At first glance, Stelson seems to be taking the “throw everything at the wall” approach. She angered Perry because he supports abortion restrictions. She blamed him for Washington's failure to resolve the border crisis. She has sharply criticized Perry, a six-term MAGA congressman, for his role in trying to overturn the 2020 election results, calling him one of the “primary instigators” of the Jan. 6 attack. And she has called on Perry to vote against bipartisan bills, including ones that would award medals to police officers who defended the Capitol that day, help homeless veterans find housing, and provide veterans' toxic health benefits Burn pits were exposed to expand.

But Stelson, a former television reporter and anchor who has been telling stories here in the Harrisburg area for nearly four decades, weaves those threads into a damning narrative about Perry in Pennsylvania's 10th District.

“He doesn’t represent Republicans in any way anymore — he’s so extreme,” Stelson, herself a former Republican, said in an interview at Cornerstone Coffeehouse in Camp Hill, just across the street from the state Capitol on the Susquehanna River.

“It’s all part of the same partisan nonsense. Most people just want a better life for their families and their children. They want to be able to afford things. They want well-paying jobs. We need to be educated, we need to be safe, we need to be healthy,” she continued. “All these things he couldn’t achieve because he’s so extreme.”

It's not yet clear whether this messaging strategy will work against Perry, who has proven resilient to previous Democratic attempts to defeat him.

Although the swing district leans Republican, Stelson is ahead of Perry in recent polls, and she raised more than three times what he did in the quarter that ended Sept. 30: $2.85 million to $853,000- Dollar. National Democrats like that she is a Washington outsider and a trusted voice running against a six-term incumbent with a lot of baggage, but also someone who has built-in name recognition because she has been on voters' TV screens for decades.

Over the course of an hour at the local cafe, several patrons recognized her and wished her good luck.

Still, there are more registered Republicans than Democrats here. Trump beat Joe Biden in the south-central Pennsylvania district by more than 4 percentage points in 2020 and is expected to win again. Perry handily defeated Harrisburg City Council member Shamaine Daniels by 7.6 points in 2022, the same year popular Democratic gubernatorial candidate Josh Shapiro won the district against a controversial GOP candidate by 12 points.

In a telephone interview Wednesday, Perry pushed back against Stelson's litany of attacks, saying that she had distorted or lied about many of his positions and that she was ignoring important issues in the campaign, such as the economy, crime and foreign policy. He also minimized her Emmy-winning television career.

“It’s just a whole bunch of DCCC talking points and coaching. And, you know, she just talks it down,” Perry said, referring to Democrats’ campaign effort in the House. “When she was asked about the economy (at a debate), she talked about abortion. … Crime is increasing; she won't talk about it. …She's not a journalist. … She's a presenter, so she's been reading other people's minds for 38 years.

“She doesn't talk at all about what's happening on the international stage,” continued Perry, a former Army brigadier general who served tours in Iraq. “Maybe she doesn't care, maybe she just doesn't have the knowledge about it.” Because again, going out is one thing, being a beat reporter is another.”

Perry also criticized Stelson for living outside the district in Lancaster: “This person is asking the entire 10th District to vote for her and she can't vote for herself.”

Speaking to Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC on Wednesday, Stelson said she had previously lived in many different homes in the county, including in Dauphin and Cumberland counties. Stelson first moved to Harrisburg in 1986 to become a reporter and weather anchor at ABC affiliate WHTM. She joined NBC affiliate WGAL as a news anchor in 1997 before resigning last year.

“I know this area very well and, more importantly, this area knows me,” she said.

Abortion and the border

Stelson's challenge is one that Democrats across the country are grappling with: 2024 will be an election dominated not by one or two specific motivating issues, but by many issues at once.

In 2020, Democratic voters were driven to the polls by Trump's mishandling of the Covid-19 pandemic. And in the midterm elections two years later, Democrats exceeded expectations — holding the Senate and fending off a Republican wave in the House — thanks to the backlash to the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade.

During the campaign, Republicans have focused on two key issues: high prices and the “border invasion” that they say threatens national security. But Democrats like Stelson appear to dominate their opponents on a much broader range of issues, in part because voters themselves disagree about which issue is most important.

In an NBC News poll this week, 22% of registered voters said they would vote for or against candidates based on their views on abortion, 19% said immigration/border security, 18% said protecting democracy, 16% said , the cost of living, 9% said Israel's war against Hamas and Hezbollah and 8% said weapons.