Katie McGinty and Joe Sestak face off Tuesday in a race pitting the Democratic establishment against a now-reviled politician.
While Sestak, a former Navy admiral, has led throughout buoyed by name-ID and his military career, he has been matched and possibly overtaken in the final week by McGinty, according to polling. A former chief of staff to Gov. Tom Wolf and green energy lobbyist, McGinty has received help from President Obama, Vice President Biden, and other outside groups over the final month with many in those circles believing she’s their only prayer to beating incumbent Sen. Pat Toomey in the fall.
“It’s going to be a close race. It’s hard to handicap,” said Chris Borick, a political science professor at Muhlenberg College, pointing to a high number of undecided voters registering in polls and McGinty’s ability to hit the airwaves as X-factors.
“[Outside support] matters. Pennsylvania is a place that there are expensive media markets and a number of them that make it a hard place to run statewide without the resources to get your message out. And the funding and outside support McGinty’s got has been invaluable in tightening this race to the point where it looks like a really close contest.”
Sestak has been forced to go it alone throughout most of his bid, with the vast majority of party bosses actively lobbying McGinty and others last summer to join the fray against him, including Wolf, former Gov. Ed Rendell and Sen. Bob Casey. All three have endorsed McGinty.
However, despite her institutional support, not everyone buys the argument that McGinty is the consummate insider. Former Penn. Democratic Party chairman T.J. Rooney believes that Sestak, a former Congressman, and his ties bind more to the establishment than McGinty’s in many ways.
“I don’t understand what f—-ing world we live in where the woman environmentalist who worked her way up, pulling up her bootstraps is the insider and the white male, former member of congress is the outsider,” Rooney told the Washington Examiner Monday. “Katie was able to do something that very few are able to do in politics, and that’s put it all together. She has help, make no mistake about it, but you make your own fortune, you make your own success, and if she wins tomorrow, the primary reason will because of her hard work.”
Despite his shortcomings with party elites, Sestak has continued to poll highly throughout the race, with McGinty only recently grabbing a slight three-point lead, according to the latest RealClearPolitics average. Having been virtually campaigning ever since his 2010 defeat, Sestak has been on the road non-stop since announcing his bid, with his style appealing to those he comes in contact with.
“Joe Sestak’s a hard political figure to easily categorize,” Borick said, noting past political successes despite his relationship with Democratic figureheads. “The things that rub many insiders the wrong way don’t seem to have the same crossover to everyday voters. People that see him or meet him in short opportunities generally have favorable views of him and he’s a pretty good communicator in the forums that he’s been out [to] and, again, his tireless effort to reach out to voters pays off, and that’s why I think he’s in the good position that he’s in. Will it pay off? We’ll see.”
The prize for the winner is a date with Toomey in the fall. For Sestak it would be a second bite at the apple after losing out in 2010 by two points. Meanwhile, it would be a first statewide contest for McGinty, who ran unsuccessfully for the gubernatorial nod in 2014, finishing last behind Wolf, former Rep. Allyson Schwartz and Rob McCord, the state’s recently-indicted former treasurer. However, Team Toomey is taking nothing for granted in a race that could feature two women on the Democratic side and Donald Trump leading the ticket for Republicans in what many deem to be a purple state.
[Toomey] will face a battered candidate from a fractured primary who will be out of money, but the Democrats are going to be able to put all those pieces back together. So I know that Sen. Toomey is not going to rest on his laurels or his financial advantage or his organizational strength,” said Charlie Gerow, a Harrisburg-based GOP strategist. “He’s going to have to work and work very, very hard starting [Wednesday]. It’s a long slog for him.”d
