Biography & Campaign Analysis
Background
Chrissy Houlahan was born on June 5, 1967, and spent her childhood on various U.S. naval bases across the country, including on Oahu. Her father, Andrew C. A. Jampoler, was a naval aviator born in Lviv, Ukraine, in 1942 to a Jewish family, and he later became a historian and author.
Houlahan earned a bachelor's degree in engineering from Stanford University in 1989 on an AFROTC scholarship and a master's degree in Technology and Policy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1994.
Career
After Stanford, Houlahan spent three years on U.S. Air Force active duty at Hanscom Air Force Base in Bedford, Massachusetts, as a project manager for air and space defense technologies, and she remained in the Air Force Reserve until 2004, leaving as a captain.
She was chief operating officer of the sportswear company AND1 and later of the nonprofit B-Lab, taught 11th-grade science at Simon Gratz High School in Philadelphia through Teach for America, and served as president and CFO/COO of Springboard Collaborative, an early childhood literacy nonprofit.
Houlahan won the redrawn 6th district in 2018, defeating Republican Greg McCauley with 58.8% of the vote, and became the first Democrat to represent a Chester County-based district since before the Civil War.
She was reelected in 2020, 2022 and 2024, defeating Republican Neil Young Jr. with 56% of the vote in the last of those races.
In the 118th Congress she served on the Committee on Armed Services and the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and she co-chairs the Servicewomen and Female Veterans Caucus.
2026 race
The 6th district includes all of Chester County and the city of Reading in Berks County. Chrissy Houlahan, who was reelected with 56.2% of the vote in 2024, ran unopposed in the 2026 Democratic primary and received 63,022 votes. In the general election on November 3, 2026, she faces Republican Marty Young, a business consulting executive who was unopposed for the Republican nomination.