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2016: Sestak Recruiting Volunteers

Admiral Sestak
Admiral Sestak

In what might be some of the earliest volunteer recruitment calls ever, Admiral Joe Sestak is recruiting volunteers to help with his 2016 run for Senate.

Several 2010 supporters of his first run against Toomey confirmed being called by the Sestak campaign, asking them to volunteer or write Letters to the Editor on behalf of Sestak’s health care policies. He’s also reportedly held a cadre of interns since the 2010 race.

He’s not been coy about his 2016 run, but recruiting volunteers 27 months before the election could be a record.

PoliticsPA is seeking comment from the Sestak campaign.

Following his very close loss in 2010, many thought he would try again in 2016, but in the more than three years since that defeat, other Democratic rising stars are considering a run as well.

Attorney General Kathleen Kane is one such star who could give Sestak a run for his money in a Democratic primary. She was the highest vote getter in 2012 and has only gained support from progressives with her choice not to defend the Defense of Marriage Act and deferring to the Corbett administration on whether to appeal the Voter ID decision.

She’s clearly already thinking about fundraising, as she hired highly-regarded fundraiser, Aubrey Montgomery of Rittenhouse Political Partners, late last year.

Another possible contender in the Democratic primary is Montgomery County Commissioner Josh Shapiro. He’s a former State Rep. and has been rumored to be seeking higher office for some time now.

Whoever comes out of the primary will be locked in a tough race with Senator Pat Toomey who reported over $4 million on hand at the end of last year.

 

27 Responses

  1. Everyone in Pa should thank Joe Sestak for his vote for the Marxist Obamacare! Thank all the Marxist Democrats for working so hard to destroy this country! They should all be ashamed of themselves! They and this enemy of America in the White House!

  2. Islam is the problem. As soon as we recognize that, we can begin to come up with solutions to the problem.

  3. Get rid of all district senators and reps. they are useless and do nothing to make positive change. The republicans are a joke. They complain about the Democrats yet they are as bad if not worse. Get out and stay out.

  4. Maybe the Admiral will ‘police’ this dump we call Pa. The loons we now have could care less about the condition of our state. Litter everywhere!

  5. John Harvey-
    On your blog you wrote:
    “If a company cannot afford to pay its workers a living wage there is something wrong with the company’s business model. Maybe the company should be replaced by another with a better business plan.”

    Well, since Sestak has made a point of paying his workers less than minimum hourly wage, maybe you should replace him with a better candidate.

    Andrew-
    It’s hard to get motivated at all about a guy who lives in Virginia running to be a one-term Senator in Pennsylvania.

  6. I can confirm Sestak’s recruitment efforts. I get weekly emails from his campaign…probably because I was a donor and volunteer in 2010. I support Joe, but it’s hard to get motivated three years prior.

  7. Flynnbw-
    First of all, Murphy was running for AG for the sole purpose of running for Gov. That is not disputed.

    Second, I remember seeing Kane at debates as well. While she was clear about completing her term if elected, she did not promise to run for a second term nor exclude running for a different office at the end of her term.

    As AG, Kane’s been forced to support some laws she’s disagreed with. She can easily make the case about taking the fight to Washington to change the laws for the better.

    Besides, we want her to run for Senate. Even if Sestak could win, he’d be a one-term Senator and never face the voters. Kane would be a far better choice for Pennsylvania.

  8. David:

    The entire premise of Kane’s campaign was the fact that she was “a prosecutor, not a politician.” Part of that was promising to serve a full four-year term, then run for re-election and, if she won, serve another full term. I remember her bringing this up in one of her debates with Murphy and getting him to agree to do so as well. It will be hard for her to get out of this promise … It wasn’t just a one-off, it was a central part of her 2012 narrative.

  9. Robbie

    That’s a nice spin job, but if Kane shows Corbett slow-walked the investigation to any degree whatsoever, he’s finished, irrespective of the fact that he might never have done anything “technically” illegal. The fact remains with serial pedophiles: they keep raping until the very moment they are in leg irons. That translates into the fact that, if Corbett did slow-walked matters, his actions resulted in more children getting raped than was necessary. Most people with an IQ of 20 or higher believe that, given Sandusky was indicted conveniently a couple days after JoePA jut happen to get record-setting win 409, something is really rotten in Denmark.

  10. Robbie-
    I think the key issue with Corbett’s delay is (the perception) that he had more than ample evidence to put the brakes on Sandusky before more children were harmed. The concern is that Sandusky got special treatment due to his Republican political connections in influence. Also, his actions regarding Penn State when he did know of the investigation will probably come under scrutiny.

    The Christie investigation caught fire when they found those few incriminating emails. Who knows what Kane may find.

    I give her credit for not commenting beyond the existence of the investigation and the lack of leaks.

  11. Jeremy –
    The chances of anybody, whether Attorney General Kane or anybody else, indicting Governor Corbett for taking too long to prosecute Jerry Sandusky is extremely unlikely. You may not like it, but even Tom Corbett had prosecutorial discretion as Attorney General. Merely taking longer than others think he should have taken to prosecute may damage his reputation further, but it is nowhere close to being illegal. An indictable offense would have occurred only if Corbett or his staff did something illegal. I have not yet heard any accusations of that, and certainly I have not seen any evidence of it. Nobody should make an accusation somebody did something illegal without actual proof. And not liking the actions of another person is far from proof of illegality.

    Also, a prosecutor who begins an investigation with a predetermined goal in mind is a terrible prosecutor. That is not how our judicial system does, or should, work.

    Let the investigation take its own course, without imposing any goals or timelines based solely upon what we hope to happen rather than evidence.

  12. Jeremy-
    I never heard Kane promise to serve 8 years.

    As for Corbett investigation, my understanding is that many of the email and electronic documents have been hard to come by. Some were erased, but recently were discovered to be recoverable. I’m sure plenty of Corbett’s people are fighting subpoenas.

    Look how long the Christie investigation is taking.

  13. We all know Sestak is intense!!!

    Here is the problem with Kane. She has had to years to indite Corbett on the disaster of Jerry Sandusky. So far all she has said is that she needs more time. Expectations were for Kane to investigate Corbett and bring him out of the Guv’s mansion in cuffs. That hasn’t happened.

    I like Kane and her long term prospects but if she thinks she can do nothing as AG and the run for Senator she is going to have a problem. Considering she ran against Murphy who wasn’t elected because it was rumored he wanted to use the office as a stepping stone for Guv.

    Kane will do well over the long term but needs to serve 8 years as AG as promised then run for Guv in 2022!

  14. Mike-

    By that criteria, Toomey is the one who knows how to win: run against Joe Sestak

    Part of the problem with Joe’s supporters is that they ignore “how” he tries to win: by sabotaging and backstabbing the rest of the ticket.
    We can do better. If Joe’s the “best” we can do, we should disband the party.

  15. I know Joe Sestak. I campaigned with him. I shared a ballot with him. So, I feel qualified to opine that he is a guy who knows how to win. I don’t know of any better quality in a candidate or in an advocate go Joe

  16. “He’s not been coy about his 2016 run” ….

    Umm.. he’s been pretending that he’s “exploring a run”. This has been his dodge to avoid paying his staff’s employment taxes and health care benefits, instead paying them “consulting fees”. Meanwhile, he has his brother on the payroll for $85/month and paying about $582/month in health care premiums.

    I’ve also heard that he’s tried hiring people and offering them a “stipend” instead of a salary (and using the excuse that he can’t pay them normally until he actually declares).

    How is all this not illegal abuse of campaign funds, Affordable Care Act, and IRS rules?

    Looks like FEC and PA Attorney General should be looking into this.

  17. @KingofSpades I don’t think this is ineffective. On the contrary, what a lot of people are missing is that Sestak’s campaigns are really grassroots, which is how he was able to come so close in 2010 when compared to the other dems — especially when he had the biggest funding gap in the country.

  18. For the sake of Pennsylvania please do not run. Toomey WANTS you to be the candidate. You can’t beat him.

  19. More than 2 years away from the 2016 primary, what are his volunteers supposed to do until then? He showed in 2010 that he didn’t know how to run an effective campaign, and now he’s showing it again.

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