Sen. Pat Toomey (R., Pa.) and Democrat Katie McGinty sparred in their second and final debate Monday night at Temple, engaging in a clear clash of values. Here are some of the key takeaways:
Clear policy differences: This was a fast-moving debate full of substantive differences — along with plenty of the attacks you have by now seen many times on TV.
While in some campaigns candidates try to muddy their differences, in this race there are very clear distinctions in the policy choices voters face. Toomey opposes abortion except for cases of rape, incest or to save the life of a mother. McGinty backs abortion rights for women. Toomey would like to cut income and corporate taxes across the board, while reducing regulations on businesses. McGinty says she would favor increasing taxes on "millionaires and billionaires" and has a long history in environmental protection roles. Toomey said the phrase Black Lives Matter impugns the integrity of police — "all lives matter, and I think police get that," he said — while McGinty embraced the phrase, saying "when we recognize the dignity of any person, we're all lifted up."
Right or left, you have clear options on this race.
McGinty looked more comfortable: Of course, voters don't choose their representatives based only on a checklist of policy stands.
They also want to have a sense that candidate shares their values, understand them — and can maybe seem like regular human beings. That's why style points do matter. On that front McGinty has made perhaps her greatest strides as a candidate.
She is warm in person, but like many inexperienced candidates, struggled early in the race to find the right balance between sticking to key points and sounding scripted, between showing personality without seeming forced. Her struggles to find the right public posture were encapsulated during the Democratic National Convention, where at one event she let loose and called Toomey an "a--hole" and then in a speech to the convention came off as painfully wooden.
She has looked a different candidate in the two Senate debates these past two weeks. McGinty's answers haven't changed much, but she delivers them far more smoothly while mixing in personal stories — about her brothers who hunt, for example, when talking about gun laws — that make her responses less generic.
McGinty has faced many questions about her abilities as a candidate, but largely came off as credible in two face-offs with Toomey.
Toomey gets personal: The senator, on the other hand, rarely lets his personal side out, preferring analytical answers about policy. You don't hear many stories about growing up in the Toomey home or weekends with his kids. His rivals, meanwhile, blast him as nothing but a wealthy ex-banker — with little else to fill in the biographical void.
On Monday, he gave a little more of a glance of his personal side. Countering the banker narrative, he talked about owning a small business with his brothers (a chain of sports bars in the Allentown area). And when asked about college costs, he opened by saying, "I grew up in a blue-collar working class family," and went on to describe taking out student loans to help pay for college.
It was just two glimpses, but it was more than you typically see from the data-centric senator.
(For the record, both candidates grew up in blue collar homes, and both are now millionaires).
Toomey tries to turn the tables: McGinty did have a less smooth moment after the debate, when she was asked about a well-placed Toomey jab during the debate.
Trying to the turn the tables on recent Democratic attacks, Toomey accused McGinty of "blatant hypocrisy" for criticizing his role with a bank that used aggressive foreclosure practices. He said the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, under McGinty, used the very same foreclosure techniques built into some of its contracts. His campaign then produced a blank 2008 DEP surety bond application for a wastewater management site that allows the same foreclosure tactic Democrats are assailing Toomey over.
At issue are "confessions of judgment," a foreclosure practice used by a bank, Team Capital, that Toomey co-founded and chaired until he joined the Senate, at which point he continued to own stock in it. The practice is legal under Pennsylvania law but banned in many other states, and was used by the bank to move on homes or commercial properties that businesspeople put up as collateral for business loans. Most of the foreclosures happened after Toomey left the bank's board, and Toomey's campaign says no one actually lost a primary residence as a result of the 21 cases Democrats cite. They also note it was all entirely legal and emphasized in large type in contracts with the borrowers.
After the debate, McGinty dodged eight questions about the DEP using that same technique, instead repeatedly referring back to Toomey's bank without answering what the agency did. Her campaign later noted that there was no evidence that DEP had actually used the tactic to foreclose on homes and argued that there is a difference between a bank employing the foreclosure tactic and an environmental agency doing so in deals involving wastewater facilities.
"I have never owned a bank, I was running an environmental agency," McGinty told reporters asking about Toomey's charge.
Toomey's camp described her non-answers as "a meltdown" and said McGinty had been forced to pull down a television ad attacking him on the issue. McGinty denied that -- because the ad was actually from the national Democratic Senate campaign arm, though it echoed McGinty's words. It was pulled statewide in response to complaints about its inaccuracy, Toomey's campaign said — a rare step in the world of campaign ads that regularly push the boundaries of fact.
A spokeswoman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee said the ad simply got a "minor adjustment" but that the message remains the same and on air — accusing Toomey of putting bank profits ahead of his constituents, something he strongly denies. The fight continues: on Tuesday Toomey's lawyers said the change did not address the inaccuracies and sent another round of letters seeking the ad's removal.
McGinty said Toomey was the only candidate in the race to have to pull an ad down. He did change an ad — not because of inaccuracies, but because it used an endorsement from former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in a way that her gun control organization objected to.
Not a game changer: That was the newest bit of sparring Monday, and while it adds to fodder for the campaign's final days, the issue seems unlikely to be the one that shapes how most people vote.
In fact, neither debate produced much to change the race's trajectory. Toomey was the same man Pennsylvanians have seen for years now. McGinty held her own enough to seem like a credible alternative -- a key threshold for a challenger.
With polls still showing a tight race, both campaigns still expect a fight to the finish.
You can follow Tamari on Twitter or email him at jtamari@phillynews.com.