Lamb enters primary for open Senate seat
U.S. Rep. Conor Lamb, D-17th, said Friday he is running for Pennsylvania's open Senate seat, joining a crowded Democratic field in one of the nation's most competitive races.
Lamb is seeking the nomination to replace outgoing GOP Sen. Pat Toomey.
Lamb, a former Marine and federal prosecutor, rose to political prominence three years ago when he beat a Donald Trump-backed Republican in a special election that foreshadowed the 2018 Democratic takeover of the House.
The Senate race is wide open on both sides and is expected to be among the most expensive in a 2022 U.S. midterm election that will decide party control of an evenly split Senate. Toomey is retiring after two terms.
Lamb said in a YouTube video posted Friday that he is running, declaring: "I believe this is the most important Senate seat in the country."
He planned to launch his campaign Friday afternoon at a union hall in Pittsburgh before heading out on a statewide tour.
"I talk with Pennsylvanians every day who have come to believe that our democracy is in crisis. And they're right. The other side denies reality and worships Trump. They're making it harder to vote and lying about our elections," Lamb said in his campaign video.
“I'm happy that he's running,” said Butler County Democratic Party chairwoman Catherine Lalonde, while she was driving to Lamb's campaign announcement Friday. “He proved himself to be an effective congressman. When I've talked to him, he seems sincere about doing what's best for his constituents.”
She said the primary is shaping up to be an interesting race with strong candidates, including Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman.
Lamb said Democrats need to build on their majority and "tell the truth about what's really going on in people's lives," identifying working-class pay, retirement security and health care as issues he'll be campaigning on.
Lamb faces a diverse lineup of Democratic candidates. They include Fetterman; Philadelphia state House Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta, who is Black and openly gay; and anesthesiologist Val Arkoosh, a woman who chairs Montgomery County's board of commissioners.
Lamb, who represents a district in the Pittsburgh suburbs, has walked something of a tightrope between the party's centrist and progressive wings.
He's in favor of eliminating the Senate's filibuster rule, as progressives want and moderate Democrats such as Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona have opposed.
But he has taken middle-of-the-road positions on guns and has pushed back on calls to "defund the police" and to ban fracking, the oil and gas extraction technique that environmentalists blame for polluting water. His congressional district is located in the nation's most prolific natural gas reservoir.
Lamb has also urged Democrats to broaden their appeal to white, working class voters in once solidly Democratic areas who went for Trump in a big way in Pennsylvania and elsewhere. It's unclear how that pitch, or Lamb's more moderate positions, will resonate in a Democratic primary in a state where urbanites and swing voters in the fast-growing suburbs propelled Joe Biden to statewide victory last November.
Lamb is relatively well-funded, reporting $1.8 million in his campaign account as of June 30, trailing Fetterman but ahead of everyone else in the race.
Pennsylvania's primary is May 17.
Eagle Staff Writer Steve Ferris contributed to this article.
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