Support Sen. Pat Toomey

George Will calls Sen. Pat Toomey’s race against Kate McGinty in Pennsylvania the “most consequential” of this year’s Senate contests. To understand its importance, look at Larry Sabato’s map of Senate races.

As things stand, at least according to Sabato, a Toomey win probably gives Republicans the 50 seats needed to run the Senate if Donald Trump is elected president. And if Hillary Clinton is elected, a Toomey win probably gives the GOP a decent shot at the required 51 seats. (As you can see, the presidential race could also prove highly consequential in determining who will run the Senate).

But our endorsement of Toomey isn’t based on a head count. Toomey is a solid conservative. His ACU (American Conservative Union) ratings have been in the 80s or better throughout his five-plus years in the Senate. That’s quite good for a Blue State Republican. Indeed, many Red State Republicans score worse.

The Club for Growth has endorsed Toomey, and why not? It gives him a lifetime 94 percent rating.

The Club describes Toomey this way:

Pat Toomey has long been counted among America’s most vigorous advocates for economic freedom. He has not only supported pro-growth policies, he has been a legislative leader. Toomey has proposed a balanced budget amendment, and has opposed new government debt and bailouts. Toomey consistently stands up to big-government liberals in both parties.

Toomey’s opponent is Kate McGinty. George Will describes her as “a creature of the public sector who began her government-centric life giving Senator Al Gore environmental-policy tips.” As Will says, McGinty would “probably would be a reliable member of an unleashed, and perhaps unhinged, Democratic majority.”

McGinty’s record as Pennsylvania’s environmental protection secretary suggests that she would also be a reliable line-your-pockets Democrat. According to Elaina Plott, writing for NRO, from 2003 to 2007, McGinty awarded $2.6 million in grants to environmental firms that, in 2007, employed her husband. This record provoked a Pennsylvania ethics-committee investigation and the creation of a statewide law prohibiting cabinet members from channeling grant dollars to their spouses’ employers.

McGinty is also dishonest. Pitching herself as coming from a struggling middle class background, she has expressed pride in being first in her family to go to college. Yet, BuzzFeed found that one of her brothers attended community college and then went on to LaSalle nearly a decade before Kate entered St. Joseph’s University. Now she says she is proud to be the first in her family to go to a “four-year college” directly from high school.

The “first to go to college” untruth is not the only claim McGinty has been forced to correct. She falsely claimed not have received money from the “oil and gas industry” and that Toomey has voted against “every single bill” to help veterans.

As in the presidential race, then, the Dems have nominated a corrupt and dishonest left-winger.

And as with the presidential race, this one currently is too close to call. The Real Clear Politics poll average has McGinty leading by 0.2 percentage points.

You can help tip this most consequential of Senate races in Toomey’s favor by contributing here. I just did.

Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.

Responses