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LEFTOVERS: Toomey’s earmarks, Sestak on stimulating polls, C-SPAN on the 7th

Republican Pat Toomey’s Senate campaign has been working around the clock to push the narrative that Democrat Joe Sestak is a hypocrite on the subject of earmarks. Those efforts culminated with Sestak’s admission that he made a mistake in requesting an earmark that would benefit a for-profit company.

But the Toomey people learned this week that the story they push can also bite back.

The Inquirer reported Wednesday morning that “got millions in earmarks before railing against them.” Friend-of-the-site Thomas Fitzgerald, who’s done an excellent job staying on top of this story, noted that the former congressman “won at least $9 million in earmarks, including $3 million for a private company that became for a time his largest single source of campaign contributions.”

Of course, House rules on earmarks were different then. But this gave Team Sestak a chance of its own to cry hypocrisy.

“Congressman Toomey is a typical politician who attacks his opponents on earmarks but refuses to tell Pennsylvanians the truth about who he got earmarks for,” Sestak spokesman Jonathon Dworkin told the newspaper. “What is he hiding? And why does he think that he should be held to a different standard than everyone else?”

Toomey’s campaign says the comparison is a flimsy one, noting that he soon become one of Washington’s anti-earmark crusaders.

“Pat isn’t trying to hide anything,” Toomey spokeswoman Nachama Soloveichik said. “He has very openly admitted he got a couple of earmarks… and quickly realized how out of control and how abusive the process was and said, ‘Enough.’”

Check out Fitzgerald’s story here.

Meanwhile, Republicans had their own reason to crow. Sestak, always content to offer up some harsh words for his party’s leadership, said something during his Tuesday speech in Pittsburgh that must have slipped by us. Referring to economic recovery proposals being floated by the White House, The Christian Science Monitor reported Sestak as saying: “Why now? We’re doing it for the polls, we should be doing it because it’s the right thing to do.”

Sestak’s campaign later told The Hill that the congressman wasn’t talking about President Obama’s proposals specifically, and was merely emphasizing the need to do more on job creation.

But Republicans were already pouncing.

“Pennsylvania voters will be troubled to learn that Joe Sestak still believes growing government and spending billions more will create jobs,” Republican National Committee spokesman Parish Braden said in a statement. “The fact of the matter is that since the first Obama-Sestak ‘stimulus’ became law, millions of jobs have been lost, national unemployment reached an unacceptable 9.6 percent, and the national debt has spiraled dangerously past $13 trillion. The White House’s belief that billions in new spending will help their sinking poll numbers proves just how out-of-touch Democrats are with the American people and the economy.”

And lastly, the competitive 7th Congressional District continues to draw attention from the national media. The latest to get into the act is C-SPAN, which did a six-minute segment on the race between Democrat Bryan Lentz and Republican Pat Meehan.

The video is embedded at bottom. Watch long enough, and you’ll notice that yours truly had an opportunity to contribute to this one.

Check it out.

September 8, 2010 at 4:21 pm

--Dan Hirschhorn

Tags: Joe Sestak, PA-7, Pat Toomey

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