With the departures of Ted Cruz and John Kasich, Donald Trump is now the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.
Furthermore, despite the efforts of Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton is extremely likely to be the Democratic presidential nominee.
This could have major repercussions for the second race on the PA ballot: the Senate contest between incumbent GOP Senator Pat Toomey and Democratic nominee Katie McGinty.
It didn’t take long for McGinty to point out this fact.
“Tonight, the Donald Trump-Pat Toomey ticket is all but official and a disaster for middle class families because Trump/Toomey refuse to give hard-working men and women raise they deserve,” McGinty stated. “For many months now, Donald Trump has hurled insults at women, immigrants, Muslims, veterans and many others and despite this, Pat Toomey remained silent and pledged his support to the Republican presidential nominee – Donald Trump.”
“Toomey even refused to do his job in the hopes that Trump would eventually have the chance to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court. The Trump-Toomey ticket is wrong for Pennsylvania and harmful for hard-working families,” she concluded. “I will continue to stand with Pennsylvania’s working families to move our country forward and reject the policies and ideology of Donald Trump and Pat Toomey.”
Toomey has a complex relationship with Trump.
He endorsed Rubio, voted for Cruz and has criticized the New Yorker in the past.
Nevertheless, Sen. Toomey has stated that he will vote for Trump in November.
It is clear that Toomey’s strategy is to try and link McGinty to Hillary Clinton, as he made clear on Dom Giordano’s radio show today.
“It certainly looks like Donald Trump is on his way to the nomination,” he stated. “That looks pretty clear after [the Indiana primary] and Ted Cruz getting out of the race. Donald Trump was not my first choice. He wasn’t my second choice or third or fourth choice. I have lots have differences with Donald Trump and lots of problems with him but I am absolutely in the ‘never Hillary Clinton’ camp.”
PoliticsPA reached out to the Toomey camp after it became clear Trump would be the nominee and they sent the following statement: “Pat Toomey has made it very clear that he disagrees with Donald Trump in several areas; Katie McGinty has made it very clear that she’s a total liberal rubber stamp for Hillary Clinton and the Washington party bosses who bought her primary victory for her.”
We followed up with the Toomey team and asked if it would be fair to describe this as a Clinton/McGinty vs. Trump/Toomey battle. They did not respond.
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17 Responses
Toomey always has a hard time doing what he talks about. I think Toomey being a Koch Brothers Stooge hooking the McGinty campaign to the next president of the United States Clinton is pure genius for Katie McGinty. Time for Pat Toomey to go back to Wall Street and trade Derivatives. Hey maybe the Koch Brothers will give him another job.
Isaac L-
Exactly. It’s typical head-up-the-ass thinking that produces no results (but lots of noise complaining about the outcomes you didn’t contribute too).
Being “practical” and getting stuff done is a lot harder than “imagining”.
And, you are right about Sestak.
Steven Todd’s position as stated here seems to embody the ultimate white, cis-gendered, heterosexual male progressive privilege. Don’t get your way on your preferred ideologically pure candidate? Stay home or vote third party, effectively helping the candidate most opposed to your positions, which isn’t going to change unless and until we have a constitutional amendment of our elections process. At the end of the day, it’s not like our pure progressive saint has any real skin in the game and he gets to go home and write his progressive Facebook and Twitter and blog posts and claim some kind of principled martyrdom while he throws women, LGBT, working people, etc. under the bus with a de facto vote for the other guy. In fact, a Trump presidency is probably better for him – after all, everyone forgot about MoveOn after Obama became president.
Meanwhile the practical progressives will continue to do the slow, steady, hard work of change, realizing that radical revolutions might be satisfying in the short-term but galvanize opposition and impede progress in the long-run. I’m not trying to pick on Mr. Todd specifically, but that mindset is unbelievably frustrating for those who have to deal with the profound consequences of these elections.
And not that it’s even that relevant anymore, but Sestak treats his workers like crap and pays them poverty wages; he’s not exactly a progressive champion.
StevenTodd-
You and Bob might not agree on much, but you both have the same myopic “purist” view of politics, which is why you can’t pick/back a winner. You end up supporting those most opposed to your values, by refusing to support the viable candidates closest to your values.
The whole “Clinton is a criminal” and “Clinton killed Vince Foster” meme is from the same conspiracy assholes who still claim that Obama is a Muslim born in Kenya. If you believe this stuff about Hillary, you watch too much FoxNews (or are just as gullible as their audience).
You made a big f*cking deal how you wouldn’t support independent candidates to run against GOP state house candidates (when there was no Dem opponent) because you (mistakenly) believed that being a Dem state committee member prohibited such support (even though the PADems are actively supporting some independents).
But, here you are declaring support for useless Jill Stein over Hillary or just plain staying home.
The “issues that matter” are civil rights, gay rights, voter rights, women’s rights, abortion rights, immigration reform, increasing minimum wage and diplomacy in foreign policy. Even on the environment, Hillary would keep the EPA and try to get it more funding, and Trump would try to disband it.
Trump is on the wrong side on all of these issues, and Hillary is on the right side (even if not as far as you would like). Hillary’s supreme court picks will defend/protect all the rights I just mentioned. Trump’s would turn back the clock.
To pretend that Trump vs Hillary isn’t a real and distinct choice is to announce to the world that you are no longer competent to make voting decisions.
And here we have another glaring example of our #BrokenSystem. My friend Bob Guzzardi and I, who agree on almost nothing in politics, but both tell the truth to the consternation of both broken parties, see absolutely eye to eye on this. As we often (usually) do on this issue of political lack of representation of almost everyone.
Given a choice of Trump/Toomey or Clinton/McGinty, many of us on the left pick Stein/Sestak, Sanders/Fetterman or stay home and wonder where true liberalism went in America.
And – as Bob points out – corporate media now has two eerily similar dream tickets (on issues that really matter) from which we lemmings are to dutifully show up and chose.
Time to allow more parties to the table, oh cloistered Dem and R leadership. That is the only way to temper the exponentially growing degree of rebellion from within both parties.
Donald Trump creates excitement and drives turnout. Oddly, a Trump voter may be a Toomey voter. Trump voters do not seem to vote “outsider” or “conservative” down ticket as proven in the Republican primaries in Pa-7, Pa-9 and Pa-16 where Republican Party endorsed crony insiders defeated the outsider, conservative challengers in Republican districts. Although Pat Toomey has walked away from his base, Donald Trump dramatically enlarges the turnout and that may help him.
I don’t think Hillary Clinton helps Katie McGinty. In fact, I am surprised Hillary Clinton has not discontinued her campaign. Donald Trump has not yet directed his attacks toward her. Bernie Sanders demonstrates that Hillary Clinton has real and known negatives which Democratic operatives masquerading as journalists, in the media,like George Stephanopoulos and Jake Tapper and Chris Matthews and Chris Cuomo as well as Stephen Colbert and Larry Wilmore have not exposed.
This all changes when Donald Trump turns his attentions to the Clintons’ opportunism and cronyism. I expect Donald Trump to do to the Clintons what he did to the GOP Establishment.
Toomey thinks he can smear McGinty by linking her to Hillary Clinton? While he’s in bed with Trump and the Kochs? Welcome to Washington, Senator McGinty!
Montco PA Dem, I don’t think it is just Pepper. McGinty got 7% of the vote on her own before the party went crazy.
Delco-
Not yet, according to realtor.com
If there was any actual evidence against her, they would have charged her last year. They’ve gone through thousands of emails so far. If there was any pattern of breaking security, we’d know about it. Don’t forget, the standard is “deliberate/intentional” release of classified info.
In you fevered, talk-radio-inspired, Benghazi-fuel dreams, Delco. And only there. There’s no indictment, there’s no wrongdoing, and there’s no hope for Republicans. Just relax and keep throwing crap against wall till November, though.
MontcoPA, you mean the one facing possible indictment?
What a great strategy by Toomey – link McGinty to the Presidential candidate that’s going to win PA in November by double digits. That’s gotta work!
Pepper — It’s just you.
Toomey is the pot calling the kettle black!
Did Joe Sestak put his pretend house in Edgmont up for sale and move back to Virginia yet?
Is it just me or is Katie McGinty really unlikable.
“Nevertheless, Sen. Toomey has stated that he will vote for Trump in November.”
Bye. Bye. Toomey