Republican U.S. Rep. Jim Gerlach is used to battling Democrats to keep his 6th Congressional District seat, but he'll also have to fend off a GOP challenger this year.

Gerlach, of West Pikeland, has served in the House of Representatives since 2002 and will face a GOP challenger in Pat Sellers, a Wallace resident who has been active in Coatesville politics.

Sellers, who identifies himself as a tea party candidate, is considered a long shot. He has raised little money and has nowhere near the name recognition, or GOP support, that Gerlach enjoys.

Of the four candidates, only Gerlach has held political office. A fiscal conservative, Gerlach has opposed much of the spending proposed by Congressional Democrats over the past three years. He also voted against the Obamacare bill.

Gerlach, 55, is also known for strong constituent services and his work on senior citizen and veterans issues.

Sellers, 55, a master electrician, project manager and estimator for Philips Brothers Electrical Contractors Inc., is running to the right of all four candidates.

"I decided to enter the race to represent Pennsylvania's 6th Congressional district because no other announced candidate holds values close enough to those I find most important," Sellers states on his Web site. "Among those values are defending individual liberty through self reliance, limited constitutional government, sound money, property rights, free markets and a non-interventionist foreign policy."

Dr. Manan Trivedi, 35, of Union Township, a physician at Reading Hospital and Medical Center, and Doug Pike, 60, a former newspaperman who recently moved to Paoli, are vying for the Democratic nomination.

Although both Democrats have raised similar sums from donors, Pike has given more than $1 million to his own campaign, giving him a significant cash advantage over Trivedi.

Trivedi and Pike are more evenly matched and have spent the primary season debating who will be better able to appeal to the average 6th District voters this November. The district includes communities in Montgomery, Chester and Berks counties a tiny area in Lehigh County.

The Democratic race thus far has been more about image than ideology.

Trivedi, who grew up in Reading and served as a U.S. Navy physician, said he believes his local roots and military background will play well in the Chester and Berks portions of the 6th District.

"I can appeal to the more than 60,000 veterans who live in this district," Trivedi said.

Gerlach's past Democratic opponents have come from the affluent Main Line, Trivedi noted, and therefore have had trouble relating to the full range of the district's voters.

Trivedi has received endorsements from the Chester County Democratic Committee and two prominent voices in Chester County Democratic politics: county Commissioner Kathi Cozzone and state Sen. Andy Dinniman, D-19th, of West Whiteland.

Pike, who spent years on the Philadelphia Inquirer's editorial board, has received endorsements from many labor unions and from Democratic leaders across the greater Philadelphia area.

Pike said his long record of speaking out on behalf of the rights of working people will play well in all corners of the 6th District.

"I have been fighting for the average person for decades as a journalist," Pike said.

Pike also has been critical of Republican leaders.

"The Republicans sold their soul to President Bush and now don't have the decency to clean up the mess," Pike said.

The son of Otis Pike, a nine-term Democratic Congressman from New York, Pike said he is the Democratic candidate best able to put together a strong campaign opposing Gerlach.

Although Pike has been criticized for attempting to buy a seat in Congress, he said his willingness to donate money to his own campaign has been an advantage.

"I've got the resources," Pike said. "At the end of March, I had three times the war chest of Jim Gerlach. Never has he been at that kind of a disadvantage."

As of the last campaign finance report filing, Pike had $1.1 million on hand, while Trivedi had $151,478 and Gerlach had $295,506.

Gerlach won the 6th District seat by narrow margins in 2002 and has held onto it by similarly narrow margins ever since. The 6th District is considered the most competitive Congressional race in the country, according to a recent study by University of Minnesota.

The race for the 6th District looked to be more competitive than usual this year, following Gerlach's 2009 announcement that he would leave his congressional seat and run for the Republican gubernatorial nomination.

But early this year, he determined he could not raise enough money to beat Pennsylvania Attorney General Tom Corbett in the GOP primary and decided instead to seek re-election in the 6th District.