Despite support, McGinty bid for Senate unclear
WASHINGTON - If Katie McGinty runs for U.S. Senate, the chief of staff for Gov. Wolf has at least one big supporter: Rep. Bob Brady, Philadelphia's Democratic chairman, said he is "100 percent in her corner."
WASHINGTON - If Katie McGinty runs for U.S. Senate, the chief of staff for Gov. Wolf has at least one big supporter: Rep. Bob Brady, Philadelphia's Democratic chairman, said he is "100 percent in her corner."
"Honorary campaign manager, anything she needed me to do," Brady said Wednesday after speaking to her earlier in the day.
McGinty's name is the latest to emerge as a possible Democratic challenger to the Republican incumbent, Pat Toomey, in a widely watched race that could help determine control of the Senate.
Brady and another prominent Democrat, former Gov. Ed Rendell, confirmed that McGinty has spoken to national Democrats about a potential bid.
But several Democrats this week cast doubt on the idea that she would launch a campaign after taking the high-profile job with Wolf at the beginning of his first term.
"I don't think she'll do it," said Rendell. "She'd have to start right now, and I don't think she'd feel good leaving in the middle" of the contentious state budget negotiations.
Brady said he doesn't expect McGinty to decide on a run until after Wolf resolves his standoff with Republican legislators over the budget.
Still, he emphatically said he would back her over Joe Sestak, the former Delaware County Congressman who is the only Democrat in the race. Brady said McGinty would win a primary race "without question."
Sestak has had a rocky relationship the party establishment. Brady said the vast majority of Pennsylvania Democrats in Congress would pick McGinty over Sestak.
"It's his own free thinking ways of doing things," chiding Sestak for supporting primary challengers against incumbent Democratic House members. "Well, we're free thinking too, and we're free thinking Katie McGinty."
McGinty, a native Philadelphian and Chester County resident, ran for governor last year but lost in the Democratic primary. She has not addressed the rumblings of a Senate bid - and neither would her former campaign manager.
"Katie is focused on working for Gov. Tom Wolf to pass a balanced budget," that funds public education and provides property tax relief, the former manager, Mike Mikus, wrote in an e-mail.
Wolf, during a stop in Chester County, also declined to weigh in on the topic. "I've heard the rumors that you have," he told a reporter, calling McGinty "a really great chief of staff."
A Sestak spokeswoman said "anyone who wants to get in, should get in."
Rendell said insiders underestimate how hard it could be to top Sestak, pointing out that he came within two percentage points of Toomey in 2010, despite running against a national Republican wave.
"What he did was pretty remarkable," Rendell said.
The only other Democrat in the race, Allentown Mayor Ed Pawlowski, suspended his campaign Monday, days after the FBI raided Allentown City Hall offices.
Staff writers Angela Couloumbis and Chris Palmer contributed to this report.
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