Toomey brings campaign to county
BUTLER TWP — Republican U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey made a stop in Butler County Tuesday morning, meeting with a small group of law enforcement and fire officials as part of a daylong swing through Western Pennsylvania in the waning days of a pivotal Senate race most polls show is a toss-up.
Toomey, who was joined by U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly, R-3rd, hammered his opponent, Democrat Katie McGinty, on transparency and trust and told officers he was committed to defending their integrity against the Black Lives Matter movement, fighting to roll back a partial ban on military equipment sales to police, and ending so-called sanctuary city policies in places like Philadelphia.
Toomey's sharpest attacks were reserved for Democratic challenger Katie McGinty, whom he cast as a corrupt liberal flunky with “something to hide.”
“Her blind loyalty and obedience to Hillary Clinton is so complete, she has her own e-mail scandal,” Toomey said, referring to some 15,000 e-mails from McGinty's 6-month tenure as Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf's chief of staff that the Pennsylvania GOP requested be released last year.
The vast majority of the e-mails were, but about 70 were largely redacted and initially ruled exempt by the Pennsylvania Office of Open Records because they contained personal information. Earlier this month a Commonwealth Court panel ordered the e-mails released within 30 days — a deadline Toomey noted falls after the election on Nov. 8.
“You've got to ask: what is she hiding?” Toomey said Tuesday morning.
McGinty's campaign has denied any wrongdoing and said she “has absolutely no problem,” with the e-mails being released.
Toomey, who called the Black Lives Matter movement “a complete lie,” “a smear,” and “an attack on the integrity of the police,” warned that McGinty would fall in line with policies that make police less safe on the job.
“My opponent will capitulate to whatever pressure she comes under from politically correct people,” he said.
The stop was the first in a daylong swing through Western Pennsylvania. Toomey was expected to make stops in Pittsburgh and Cannonsburg on Tuesday as well, as he seeks to shore up support in a region where the campaign is counting on big margins of victory to make up for expected losses in places like Allegheny and Philadelphia counties. Toomey called those margins in conservative strongholds like Butler County essential if he is to come out on top next week.
“You've got to run up the score in places that you can,” Toomey said. “We need to win, and win big, here to make this happen.”
To do that, Toomey tapped Congressman Mike Kelly, who is running unopposed for reelection in the U.S. House's 3rd District. Kelly pledged his full support to Toomey Tuesday — “I've got your back,” he said — and called him a vital GOP voice in the Senate.
“He's too important, he brings such clarity,” Kelly said. “Without him we lose. We lose in a big way.”
Outside groups on both sides have agreed, and the Toomey-McGinty race has emerged as the most expensive contest in the country barring the Presidential campaign. As of Monday, both campaigns and outside groups had spent about $156 million — much of it paying for television ads savaging both candidates.
Despite the millions poured into the race, neither has managed to build or sustain a commanding lead.
Toomey led by as much as 20 points last fall, but by July polls had McGinty with a 7-point lead. More recent polling has the candidates neck-and-neck coming into the campaign's final week, with McGinty leading Toomey 44.8 percent to 40.8 percent, according to RealClearPolitics' polling average.
On Tuesday a wrinkle emerged, with Franklin & Marshall College publishing a poll showing McGinty leading by 12 points, 47 percent to 35 percent. The poll stood as a statistical outlier to other surveys published in the last month, and prompted a response in which Toomey's campaign called the F&M poll “laughable,” and “worthless.”
“They got a bad sample,” said Mark Harris, a strategist for the campaign. “It's a tied race and we see it as a tied race.”
Harris said the F&M poll's sample of 652 likely voters included a disproportionate number of democrats — nearly two times greater than the ratio the campaign expects to see on election day next week — and wasn't an accurate representation of the Pennsylvania electorate.
Commenting on public polls isn't something the campaign normally does, Toomey acknowledged, but he felt it was important to repudiate the F&M poll.
“It was just laughable,” Toomey said. “This is a tied race. We just wanted to make it clear there were some fundamental flaws with their methodology.”
