Katie McGinty Approached on Senate Run

Katie McGinty, who ran for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination last year, has been approached by party leaders about running for Pat Toomey’s Senate seat.

It’s starting to look like the Democratic establishment really doesn’t want Joe Sestak challenging Pat Toomey for the U.S. Senate in 2016. Sestak hasn’t always helped himself as a candidate, and each week brings fresh rumors of efforts by party leaders to recruit a primary opponent for Sestak.

The latest? Katie McGinty.

McGinty ran for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination last year, losing to eventual winner Tom Wolf, but ending up as his chief of staff.

“Former governor, Ed Rendell, says national Democrats have contacted Governor Tom Wolf’s top aide about running for U.S. Senate,” WITF reports. “However, Rendell says he doesn’t think Katie McGinty will run and that she’s committed to working through a budget standoff with state lawmakers as Wolf’s chief of staff. “

The Washington Post brands Toomey “the luckiest Republican in America.”

“He’s a conservative (at least fiscally) senator running for reelection in a purplish state in a presidential election year. Hillary Clinton (if, of course, she clears the Bernie Sanders hurdle) will likely win Pennsylvania, which hasn’t picked the GOP nominee since 1988. By all conventional wisdom, Toomey should be a goner,” the paper says. Lucky for him, the paper says, that Dems can’t seem to coalesce around a star candidate. Kathleen Kane was done in by scandal, Josh Shapiro begged off, and nobody else has emerged.

But that could change. PoliticsPA points us to a a Politico piece on Minority Leader Harry Reid’s involvement in the 2016 elections, including in Pennsylvania:

“When Reid and his lieutenants assessed the increasingly messy situation in the Pennsylvania Senate race, they decided they needed to intervene,” Manu Raju writes. “For months, former Rep. Joe Sestak had been running what they considered a lackluster campaign, forcing party leaders to woo other potential candidates. But with Sestak now appearing as the candidate most likely to win the Democratic nomination, Reid and party elders sought to right the ship.”

“At a private meeting in Washington last month, sources familiar with the session said, a clear message was delivered to Sestak: Make some key changes to the campaign — including hiring more staff and stepping up his fundraising — and the party establishment would seriously consider throwing its weight behind him.”