Democratic Senate Candidate Debate To Focus On Young Voters
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — The three Democrats running for a chance to unseat Republican U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey in the fall election will take questions from an audience of college students on the campus of Penn State University Saturday night as they vie for undecided voters and millions of dollars in TV ads pour into the race.
The debate between John Fetterman, Katie McGinty and Joe Sestak at WPSU in State College will be broadcast online by WPSU and shown live on public television stations around much of Pennsylvania.
It will be the second debate this week to be broadcast live on TV, as the closely watched campaign speeds toward the April 26 primary election. A Tuesday night debate dissolved into attacks over who has the strongest stance on regulating the natural gas industry, who is the biggest champion for a minimum wage increase and who will fight efforts to weaken Social Security benefits.
In this debate, students from seven Pennsylvania schools — East Stroudsburg, Lafayette, Penn State, Pitt, Temple, Villanova and West Chester — will help ask the questions. The forum is sponsored by Penn State's McCourtney Institute for Democracy. Penn State students enrolled in a class on democratic deliberation helped shape the debate format, organizers say.
Unseating Toomey is seen as crucial to the Democrats' chances of retaking control of the Senate, and party leaders are putting their clout and millions of dollars on the line to help McGinty win the primary. McGinty's backers include President Barack Obama, Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada, Gov. Tom Wolf and the AFL-CIO.
Sestak is leading the polls, and he seems to relish his icy relationship with party leaders, saying he is independent of their control and answerable only to people. The former Navy vice admiral and two-term congressman from suburban Philadelphia is seeking a rematch against the first-term Toomey after losing to him in 2010.
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Emily's List and Service Employees International Union are together committing more than $2.5 million so far to TV ads in the race to help McGinty. She has held high-level posts in the state and federal governments over the past 25 years, much of it as a top environmental adviser to former President Bill Clinton and former Gov. Ed Rendell.
Meanwhile, Sestak — who had lifetime voting records in Congress of over 90 percent with the AFL-CIO and Americans for Democratic Action — is being aided by $730,000 worth of TV ads by a new political action committee named Accountable Leadership. It can accept unlimited cash donations and has yet to reveal its donors.
Total spending in the Democratic primary campaign will likely eclipse $9 million.
Fetterman, the third-term mayor of tiny, impoverished Braddock, near Pittsburgh, is making his first statewide run. He has cast himself as the most progressive and authentic candidate, citing his day-to-day efforts to quell gun violence and bring housing, food and education to his impoverished town.
In a fundraising appeal emailed by his campaign Saturday, he said, "millions of outside dollars are flooding in to Pennsylvania to prop up my opponents. And that's ridiculous, because I don't think a small handful of people should be able to determine who gets elected or who does not get elected."
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