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On this special series of the Lehigh Valley with Love Podcast, we sat down with candidates running for U.S. House in Pennsylvania’s 7th Congressional District ahead of the May 19, 2026 primary.
To keep this fair and useful, every candidate was asked the same core questions. We also reached out multiple times to Congressman Ryan McKenzie’s office and did not receive a response.
In this episode, we speak with Carol Obando-Derstine, who shares why she is running and what she is hearing from residents across PA-07.
Campaign: https://www.carolforpa.com/
Day to day financial stress
Obando-Derstine says people are struggling to make ends meet and pay for the essentials of life, specifically naming housing, healthcare, groceries, utilities, and childcare. She cites the United Way ALICE report and says it shows 41 percent of district families are struggling to cover the essentials, which she describes as roughly 124,000 households.
Healthcare and ACA premium tax credits
Obando-Derstine supports extending the ACA premium tax credits. She frames healthcare as personal, sharing stories of people she knew who could not afford care and how costs can financially devastate families. She argues that access to care helps families and also strengthens the economy because prevention and early treatment keep people healthier and working. In this conversation, she focuses on why the subsidies matter and does not detail a specific funding mechanism.
Immigration enforcement, legal pathways, and work authorization
Obando-Derstine says immigration policy is personal to her as an immigrant who came to the United States at age three with parents who fled violence in Colombia. She says the system needs fixing in a way that is legal, effective, and humane. She criticizes what she describes as cruelty, racial profiling, and unaccountable enforcement, and says fear is widespread in immigrant communities, including among documented Latinos. She also says she supports secure borders, but argues the current approach creates chaos and does not make communities safer. She calls for more immigration judges and support staff, modernizing immigration courts, speeding up asylum processing, and opening up DACA applications so people are not kept in limbo.
Warehouses and data centers
Obando-Derstine notes that local governments make many of the key decisions, and she emphasizes a robust local stakeholder process so residents have meaningful input. Drawing on her background as an energy engineer, she describes work connecting projects to the electric grid, including warehouses. She argues against a top down approach that overrides state and local authority and says local voices should guide what gets built and how communities are impacted, especially when projects use significant resources and create limited jobs.
Homelessness
Obando-Derstine says she has direct experience with this issue through service on the Homeless Veterans Task Force for Lehigh County, volunteer work with North Penn Legal Services, and her work advocating for prevention programs to keep families off the streets. She calls for federal action that prevents unjust evictions and proposes establishing a federal Office of Tenant Rights so people understand their rights and landlords are accountable. She also points to the role of legal aid and says cuts to legal aid programs affect the ability to prevent evictions. She supports expanding and strengthening incentives for affordable housing, including the Low Income Housing Tax Credit, and suggests reform to reduce bureaucracy and improve consistency in how states administer that federal credit. She also names local organizations doing the work, including New Bethany and the United Way.
Third place in the Lehigh Valley
Obando-Derstine says her third place is her church community, specifically the Spanish service at the Cathedral Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, which she attends with her parents. She describes it as a gathering place with a strong community focus and notes that it also hosts local meetings such as housing related committees.
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