Wild ran for Lehigh County Commissioner in 2013, but lost. She was appointed the first female solicitor of Allentown, Pennsylvania in January 2015. She served as Solicitor of Allentown from January 7, 2015, when she was confirmed by the Allentown City Council, until December 31, 2017, when she resigned from office to pursue her candidacy for the United States House of Representatives to succeed retiring U.S. Rep. Charlie Dent in 2018. In the 2018 elections, Wild ran for the United States House of Representatives in. That district had previously been the 15th, represented by seven-term Republican Charlie Dent. She won the Democratic Party primary election and faced Republican Lehigh County commissioner Marty Nothstein in the November 6 general election. She defeated Nothstein in the general election. When the final precincts were counted, Wild received 53.4% of the vote.
2018 special election
On the same day, Wild also ran in a separate special congressional election for the balance of Dent's term; he had resigned in May after announcing the previous fall that he would not run for reelection. On November 15, 2018, it was announced that Wild had won the 15th congressional district's special election, receiving 130,353 votes to Nothstein's 129,593 votes. The closer margin in the special election came because it was run under the old lines that had been thrown out by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in February 2018. The old 15th had stretched from the Lehigh Valley into heavily Republican territory between Lebanon and Harrisburg, by way of a tendril in Berks County. The new 7th is a somewhat more compact district centered in the Lehigh Valley, and includes a sliver of the Poconos.
Tenure
Upon taking office, Wild became the first Democrat to represent the Lehigh Valley since 1999. She had two months' more seniority than the rest of the large Democratic freshman class of 2018. She was one of four Democratic women elected from Pennsylvania in 2018. The others were Mary Gay Scanlon, Madeleine Dean and Chrissy Houlahan. The state's congressional delegation had previously been all male. Wild has been critical of Brazil's president Jair Bolsonaro, a regular target of such left-leaning publications such as Vox for views characterized as 'far-right', 'misogynistic', 'homophobic' and 'anti-immigrant'. In March 2019, Wild and 29 other Democratic lawmakers wrote a letter to Secretary of StateMike Pompeo. The letter read in part, "Since the election of far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro as president, we have been particularly alarmed by the threat Bolsonaro’s agenda poses to the LGBTQ+ community and other minority communities, women, labor activists, and political dissidents in Brazil. We are deeply concerned that, by targeting hard-won political and social rights, Bolsonaro is endangering Brazil’s long-term democratic future."
On December 10, 2019, Democrats on the HouseJudiciary Committee advanced two articles of impeachment against Republican President Donald Trump. On December 18, 2019, Wild voted 'Yes' on the first article of impeachment, "abuse of power", and 'Yes' on the second article of impeachment, "obstruction of Congress".
Wild and her husband, Russell Wild, divorced in 2003 after 22 years of marriage. They have two adult children, Clay and Adrienne. Following her divorce, Wild reunited with her law school boyfriend, Kerry Acker, who remained her life partner until his death on May 25, 2019. She lives in South Whitehall Township, west of Allentown. She is Jewish.
