The 2016 Senate contest has officially begun.
Today, incumbent Sen. Pat Toomey launched his first campaign commercial.
The thirty-second spot, titled “Safer”, focuses on the Senator’s work protecting kids from child predators working in schools.
“Last year, over 400 school employees were discovered as sex offenders,” the ad begins.
The majority of the commercial, though, consists of testimony from trauma therapist and abuse survivor Kristen Pfautz Woolley.
“I am proud to work with Senator Pat Toomey to help change our laws and to make this world safer for our children,” Woolley states.
The commercial, which will be airing in the Pittsburgh media market, is an expanded version of a web ad the campaign created.
Toomey is running against 2010 opponent and former Congressman Joe Sestak as well as Allentown Mayor Ed Pawlowski. The contested Democratic primary allows the incumbent to focus on issues such as this, while his two competitors angle for their party’s nomination.
Update: The Sestak campaign has already responded with a video of their own.
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8 Responses
I see a commercial Senator Toomey is running about how he helped prevent predators from teaching in schools throughout the Commonwealth. The ad depicts the case of Edgar Friedricks, Jr who taught in PA for 9 years and left for Fayette County, West Virginia in 1975. Subsequently, he was fired for molesting boys after teaching in WV for 26 years. While in prison, serving a 50-65 year sentence, Friedricks was also found guilty of murdering Jeremy Bell, a 12 year old boy, from Fayette County, WV. The problem I have is that Toomey’s commercial leads one to believe that the “predator” worked in PA and was hired in PA after alleged child abuse back prior to 1975 and that the murdered victim was from PA. Although I support strong background checks for school personnel, this was a West Virginia case and that school board in Fayette County, WV was sued successfully for $2.2 million by Jeremy Bell’s family. When I first heard this commercial I was appalled about what’s going on in the PA school system, but I further checked into the the case and wondered why Toomey is using an awful tragedy from WV to promote his campaign in PA.
Do you ever fact check the claims made by politicians ?
@Chick: There were “safeguards?” You mean the ones that allowed teachers to get passed around like priests?
Thank you Sen. Toomey!
Toomey is touting the only thing he has done in his tenure, and there were actually good safeguards in place before this irrelevant legislation. Just a reiteration of the absence of any meaningful accomplishments from Toomey, who consistently sides with inane right-wing fanatics.
Toomey can afford to run well-produced positive ads about himself on television.
Sestak, to his credit, did respond VERY quickly with a counter ad, but it’s hastily put together, and it’s going to get only a few hundred hits on YouTube.
Toomey has the time and money (and skill) to fool the voters into thinking he’s moderate.
I wonder if Auditor General DePasquale has been approached about running for Senate for the Dems?
Today is the fundraising deadline for federal candidates. In a few weeks, we’ll see their FEC reports. I wonder if any of them will reveal their numbers to PoliticsPA in the next few days.
Pennsylvanians have found their candidate in 2016!
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Brilliant. Also shameless and pandering, but brilliant nonetheless.
If this is the type of ADs we can expect form Toomey, then he is well on his way to re-election.