They’ve poured millions into Pennsylvania, dispatched Joe Biden and courted candidate after candidate to find someone who could beat former Rep. Joe Sestak in the state’s Democratic Senate primary.
Tuesday night, the Democratic establishment’s plot to rub out Sestak — a long-time party agitator who has the backing of progressives in his state — will be put to the ultimate test as he faces a candidate with the strong backing of the party’s leadership: Katie McGinty.
“I think Katie McGinty will win tonight, so it’s moot,” said New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, the likely next Democratic leader, said when asked Tuesday if he thought Sestak could win a general election against GOP Sen. Pat Toomey.
The divisive primary fight is hardly the only one that has consumed their party in recent months. On Tuesday, voters will also make a decision in Maryland, where Rep. Chris Van Hollen, who has won the support of Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, faces off against Rep. Donna Edwards, a progressive candidate with the deep backing of liberal women’s groups in the state. The winner of the Maryland Democratic primary will be the heavy favorite to hold onto the seat being vacated by liberal Sen. Barbara Mikulski.
But the Pennsylvania race has far bigger implications, with Toomey’s seat at the heart of the national Democratic effort to retake the Senate majority. Democrats in Washington have calculated that McGinty — a former chief of staff to Gov. Tom Wolf — is the superior candidate over Sestak, who has a history fraught with tension with his congressional delegation and party leadership.
“Not at all,” said Rep. Bob Brady, a 10-term congressman, when asked if Sestak works well with others. “He dances to the beat of his own drum. We need people to be cooperative and work together.”
The fact that Democrats have so aggressively targeted Sestak has been rather remarkable given that the former two-term congressman lost by just two points when he faced off against Toomey in 2010. But it’s how Sestak waged that campaign that has kept tensions raw with party bosses.
Republicans are eager to capitalize.
“Needless to say, a divisive primary hurts the Democratic nominee,” Sen. Roger Wicker, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said of the race. “We’re not shedding any tears about the fact that it’s been a rough-and-tumble primary.”
Shortly after President Barack Obama was sworn into office in 2009, Biden and Democratic leaders wooed the late-Sen. Arlen Specter, a long-time moderate Republican, to switch parties, effectively giving the White House a resounding supermajority in the chamber. The party establishment agreed to back Specter in the 2010 Senate race, but Sestak wouldn’t listen.
Despite an aggressive lobbying campaign urging Sestak to bow out, he surprised his colleagues by announcing a run — a move that energized the left-flank of his party that distrusted the long-time Republican Specter. Further embarrassing the White House, Sestak said that the Obama administration offered him a job to stay out of the race — something that became a major distraction in the early days of the new White House.
With the backing of the base, Sestak won the primary but barely lost to Toomey in a tea-party-dominated election cycle. As the 2016 election began to move closer, Sestak made clear that he wanted to run again — prompting concerns from party elders. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and Reid tried to make amends, meeting with Sestak and urging him to name veteran party operatives to professionalize his staff and begin raising loads of cash.
Yet the two sides never saw eye-to-eye, and Sestak took the unusual but headline-grabbing move of walking 422 miles across the state.
The DSCC, Schumer and Reid began to court other candidates but ran into resistance, including when Josh Shapiro, chairman of the Montgomery County Board of Commissioners, passed on a Senate bid. They then turned to McGinty, who threw her hat into the ring last summer.
Heading into Tuesday night, the race, which includes Braddock Mayor John Fetterman, is expected to be close between McGinty and Sestak. The party establishment has pulled out all the stops, including with Biden stumping with McGinty this week and the DSCC spending at least $1.1 million on TV so far.
Sestak has been unsparing in his criticism of the party elite.
“More than anything, I want the trust of the people I will serve; that I am for them,” Sestak said in a recent statement. “It is why I have not asked for any politician’s endorsement. Perhaps too many of our politicians in both parties have acquiesced … and maybe that is why the general public — from the old tea party to today’s progressive Democrats — have felt attracted to those who seem to break the system.”
Sen. Bob Casey, the senior Democratic senator, threw his support behind McGinty as well but said he would work to repair the wounds after Tuesday night.
“No matter what the results are tonight, we will unify,” Casey said. Asked how the party would do that, Casey said: “Hard work — and time.”