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Dem chair to Toomey: Stop ‘tap-dancing’ about your Wall Street values

The metaphors were mixed but the message was clear: Pennsylvania Democratic Party chairman Jim Burn wants to tear down the image of Pat Toomey as a candidate for all Pennsylvanians.

In a conference call with reporters Thursday, Burn emerged from a post-primary reorganization of the state party leadership to take aim at Toomey, the former Lehigh Valley congressman and former Wall Street derivatives trader. Burn accused Toomey of channeling citizen anxiety about the economy onto the bailouts and stimulus packages enacted since late 2008.

“He’s focused that angst on the band-aid, not the disease, but we’re going to tell voters in Pennsylvania what’s really going on,” Burn said. “His actions [in Congress and as president of conservative Club for Growth] created the shell game. It was a deception and he wants to say the cure is what’s wrong. He created the sickness.

The criticism comes as Democrats have dug up three separate videos featuring Toomey during his stint in Congress, including this from C-SPAN in 1999, when he called for the relaxation of regulation against credit default swaps, and this video from 2000, when he urged the House to deregulate the financial industry.

Toomey’s campaign, for its part, has stayed on message.

“With every independent poll showing Toomey with a big lead, and with [Democrat Joe] Sestak’s Washington allies spending a million dollars in two weeks running attack ads that numerous independent analysts are calling ‘false,; it’s pretty clear that the Sestak campaign has reached a new level of desperation,” spokeswoman Nachama Soloveichik said. “Take away all the smoke and mirrors from the Sestak campaign, and you are left with this indisputable fact: Joe Sestak supported, and Pat Toomey opposed, the biggest gift Washington politicians have ever given Wall Street, and that is the $700-billion bailout paid for by Pennsylvania taxpayers.”

August 20, 2010 at 8:00 am

--Laura Vecsey

Tags: Democratic Party, Pat Toomey

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