Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick speaking. (Credit: Keith Mellnick/AFGE)
In a new interview, Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick mentioned the replacement of the American two-party system with a coalition government.
In an profile published last week and appearing in Philadelphia Magazine’s February print issue, the five-term Republican congressman argued that the country has devolved into a “zero-sum, all-or-nothing game” that fails to represent a divided electorate.
“The two-party system needs to go away,” Fitzpatrick told the magazine. “We need to move to a coalition government.”
The Middletown Township native, who represents the First Congressional District, cited George Washington’s 1796 farewell address as his inspiration. He noted that the Founding Fathers did not design the government to deal with the current divides.
“If the threat becomes internal and the divide becomes internal, the system of government was not really designed for that,” he told Tom McGrath, the reporter who interviewed him.
To change the current system, Fitzpatrick has proposed a suite of reforms including open primaries, term limits, and the use of nonpartisan commissions to draw congressional districts. He pointed to the thin margins in the House as a symptom of the problem.
“In the House, if you get 218 votes on a bill, you get everything. And if you get 217 votes, you get nothing,” Fitzpatrick said in the profile. “Well, a 218-217 breakdown is representative of a very divided electorate that wants compromise, but they don’t get it.”
The profile, which is titled “The Distinguished Gentleman from Bucks County,” comes as Fitzpatrick enters a high-stakes midterm election year. Several Democrats, including county Commissioner Bob Harvie, Rob Strickler, and Tracy Hunt, are competing to face Fitzpatrick in the general election.
While he defeated Democrat Ashley Ehasz by nearly 60,000 votes in 2024 and has beat back all his past opponents on the left and right, national Democrats have designated the First Congressional District seat a top target. Local Democrats are looking at recent wins by the party’s candidates in the county as a key metric.
Fitzpatrick has long spoken of term limits, but he has not announced the exact amount of terms he plans to serve if he keeps winning. He previously proposed six terms for House members, but he said in 2018 that he would avoid putting a number on his own career.
“I’m going to keep doing this as long as I can,” he told the magazine. “I have absolutely no question that I’m making a big impact.”
Despite his calls for his vision of bipartisanship, Fitzpatrick has faced criticism from both sides of the aisle on town halls and his voting record over his political career.
The congressman addressed his relationship with President Donald Trump.
The tension between the two men was reported to have escalated after Fitzpatrick voted against a version of the “One Big Beautiful Bill.”
On social media platform Truth Social, Trump suggested the congressman owed him for a “big personal favor.”
The favor reportedly involved a military burial waiver for Fitzpatrick’s late brother, Mike Fitzpatrick, who preceded him in Congress and died of cancer in 2020. The waiver allowed the late Fitzpatrick to be buried at Washington Crossing National Cemetery in Upper Makefield Township, a site he had worked to open.
Fitzpatrick told Philadelphia Magazine that the president’s decision to invoke his brother’s death for political leverage crossed a line.
“I was really upset to hear that,” he said.
The article notes that Fitzpatrick voted for former GOP South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley in the 2024 election.
While a frequent guest on cable news channels and having appeared on Jon Stewart’s podcast, Fitzpatrick was asked about his views on local media and in-person town halls.
In the profile, Fitzpatrick dismissed in-person town halls — he held one in 2017 — as “staged gotcha moments” intended to produce video clips that can be “distorted” by artificial intelligence.
In the interview, he labeled The Philadelphia Inquirer a partisan outlet. The newspaper stopped endorsing him in 2022.
The Bucks County Courier Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, local TV stations and this news organization have all reported, at times, that the congressman and his taxpayer-funded office have not returned requests for comment.
Fitzpatrick told the magazine he gets a large volume of media requests. His office employs a communications director, as is standard for congressional offices.
Fitzpatrick first won election to his brother’s seat in 2016.
