Toomey easily wins Senate primary

BETHLEHEM—Republican Pat Toomey, the former congressman who became a Pennsylvania conservative icon, easily won his party’s Senate nomination Tuesday, capturing more than 80 percent of the vote and setting up a November contest against Democrat Joe Sestak.

Almost three hours after the polls closed, Toomey rallied about 150 supporters at the Best Western hotel here, and with his wife and children by his side, celebrated the landslide win over conservative activist Peg Luksik.

And he quickly got to the business of trying to define Sestak.

“Joe adopts positions that are so extreme, so far to the left, they’re well beyond the consensus even of the Democratic Party,” Toomey said.

He said Luksik had run an “honorable campaign.”

“I appreciate her participation in the process,” he said.

Luksik, for her part, was hardly ready to embrace Toomey.

“Mr. Toomey has shown that he does not meet the standard of my endorsement,” she told pa2010.com in a phone interview.