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LEFTOVERS: Toomey & privatization, mocking indie cred, a poll, a 22-year-old tax

Democrats were scoffing Tuesday at a comment made by Republican Senate candidate Pat Toomey the day before: Speaking before the Pennsylvania Press Club in Harrisburg, Toomey asserted that “I’ve never said I favored privatizing Social Security.”

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, already knee deep in Toomey-related opposition research, had an easier job this time around, considering that Toomey has long been a leading advocate for policies that are widely considered to constitute privatization, or at least a step in that direction. Just 24 hours after Toomey’s appearance, the DSCC presented 36 published examples of Toomey voicing support for privatization policies.

“Wall Street derivatives pioneer Pat Toomey can run from his record of putting Wall Street over Main Street all he wants, but numbers don’t lie, and the reality is Toomey has voiced support for privatizing Social Security at least 36 times,” DSCC spokesperson Deirdre Murphy. “Pat Toomey has shown he will do anything to run from his record—even blatantly distorting the truth in front of Pennsylvania reporters. Facts are facts, and the truth is Pat Toomey has supported privatizing Social Security for years, including just four days ago.”

Social Security privatization is an increasingly touchy subject for Republican candidates, and conservatives scoff that the media has bought into the word privatization in an inaccurate way. GOP candidates are getting tripped up on this around the country. Toomey, for his part, is a disciplined candidate who has avoided the rhetorical minefield, while staying relatively consistent on his policy position. He supports voluntary private investment accounts, and has many times declared himself a supporter of the privatization plan that president Bush pushed unsuccessfully after he won a second term.

Toomey kept up this line Monday at the Press Club. Regardless of the debate over the semantics, his position is widely considered to count as a move toward privatization, which is why many heads were turned when he seemed to run away from that word, if not the record altogether.

Democrats, for their part, have overreached on this issue before. The DSCC says if Toomey had his way “Social Security as we know it would be gone for 2.5 million Pennsylvanians, and senior citizens would see their life savings recklessly gambled away on Wall Street.” But as FactCheck.org has found about statements by President Obama, claims like that are incomplete if not misleading.

Either way, don’t expect Democrats to stop pressing hard for Toomey to use the P-word.

Speaking of scoffing, Toomey’s campaign has been increasingly mocking Democrat Joe Sestak’s attempt to build an independent reputation. Toomey’s campaign stepped up those efforts Tuesday, using Sestak’s endorsement from Chuck Hagel as an occasion to recall all those times that Sestak said he was the “real Democrat” during the primary campaign.

The Toomey camp even put together a new video juxtaposing those statements, embedded at bottom.

And there’s another poll in the Senate race, this one coming from conservative-leaning pollster We Ask America. This survey of 1,000 registered voters has Toomey up about 12.5 votes, generally tracking with other public polling data though by a slightly larger margin. More than 17 percent of voters are still undecided in the poll.

And lastly, Democrat Dan Onorato’s gubernatorial campaign reached all the way back to the late 1980s Tuesday. Why? Because Republican Tom Corbett, then serving as a Shaler Township Commissioner (the only public policy experience of his political career), voted to raise property taxes by 20 percent.

Yes, that’s quite a ways back. But with Corbett painting Onorato as a tax-hiker and the GOP attorney general having taken a no-new-tax-pledge, Onorato must have been eager for a chance to strike back. So his campaign held a news conference in Shaler, dug up old press clips and labeled Corbett “the only candidate who has raised property taxes.”

Onorato, you might recall, has avoided raising property taxes only by fighting court-ordered reassessments, and saying Harrisburg needs to fix property tax policies statewide. “Lots of candidates make promises when they are running for office, but what voters should look at is our records,” Onorato said. “I have balanced six budgets in a row without ever raising property taxes. Tom Corbett was the deciding vote for a 20 percent tax hike in the only budget he ever voted for. There’s only one candidate for governor who has raised property taxes, and it’s Tom Corbett.”

The Onorato campaign even put together an ominous-looking Web video on the subject.

Corbett’s campaign mocked the sight of Onorato reaching back 22 years to make a point, and sent reporters a fact sheet of all the tax hikes Onorato has supported.

“This is a desperate act by a desperate candidate,” Corbett spokesman Kevin Harley said. “And the fact is that Dan Onorato never met a tax that he didn’t like or he didn’t hike. if Dan Onorato is so concerned about taxes, he should join Tom Corbett in signing a no-tax pledge.”

August 24, 2010 at 11:20 pm

--Dan Hirschhorn

Tags: Dan Onorato, Joe Sestak, Pat Toomey, Tom Corbett

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