PITTSBURGH POST GAZETTE EDITORIAL: Joe Sestak for the Dems: He’d be the toughest challenger to Pat Toomey
Democrats who want a formidable challenger to take on U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey in November should nominate the person who nearly beat the Republican six years ago: former congressman and three-star admiral Joe Sestak.
Mr. Sestak, 64, spent two terms in the House after a 31-year career in the Navy that was capped by service under President Bill Clinton as a defense policy adviser. In 2010, after defeating newly minted Democrat Arlen Specter for the party nomination, he narrowly lost the general election to Mr. Toomey — by just two percentage points in a year that Republicans were ascendant. The Delaware County resident has spent the last several years crisscrossing Pennsylvania, denouncing an obstructionist Republican Congress, defending the merits of the Affordable Care Act and seeking a rematch with Mr. Toomey.
Like other candidates, he believes that creating jobs must be Washington’s top priority. He also wants a strong homeland defense, new investment in infrastructure and a ban on fracking — a position that the Post-Gazette, which supports tough regulation of deep gas drilling, wishes he would reconsider. He endorses the Iranian nuclear accord and condemns the Trans-Pacific Partnership on trade, although he’d like to see a “principled compromise.” His voting record on Capitol Hill earned a 100 percent rating from the Sierra Club and a zero from the National Rifle Association… (more)
