send to a friend | print | comment

LEFTOVERS: Toomey’s Christmas, Hoyer for Critz, Dahlkemper on jobs

Apparently it’s not too early to start laying out the Christmas presents. That’s what we heard from Republican Senate candidate Pat Toomey on Wednesday, whose campaign rolled out a quirky new Web page depicting Democratic rival Joe Sestak as a Grinch whose “spending habits” mean Christmas in July “will not be very merry.”

The page displays presents under a tree. Click on each one, and Toomey’s campaign offers up an example of what it considers wasteful spending, from bailouts to “pork” projects. It’s all very cute. But let’s see this idea adapted for Hanukkah in August. First campaign to incorporate a Menorah into its messaging this summer wins.

Meanwhile, the special election is over, but the big guns are still pitching in for newly-elected Congressman Mark Critz (D-12). Roll Call reports that House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer is stumping for moderate Democrats throughout August, Critz among them. The pro-life, pro-gun Democrat faces a rematch against Republican Tim Burns in November.

And hey, it takes time for the unemployment rate to creep back down. That’s what Congresswoman Kathy Dahlkemper (D-3) was saying Wednesday, when her office noted that six of the seven counties in her northwest Pennsylvania district saw unemployment drop slightly in June (the other county’s rate didn’t change). Her argument encapsulates the challenge Democrats face in the messaging war, as they try to convince voters that things are getting better, even if it doesn’t always seem that way. The biggest change was in Erie County, where the unemployment rate dropped from 10 percent to 9.7 percent.

“The needle is moving in the right direction—however slowly, unemployment is decreasing in western Pennsylvania,” Dahlkemper said in a statement. “We still have a lot of work to do. It took nearly a decade of bad economic policy to put us into this recession; it’s going to take some time to get us out. But these new employment figures show us that we are on the path to recovery.”

July 28, 2010 at 5:25 pm

--Dan Hirschhorn

Tags: Joe Sestak, Kathy Dahlkemper, Mark Critz, PA-12, PA-3, Pat Toomey, Steny Hoyer

comments

comments [0] | post a comment