pa2010.com Staff | pa2010
President Obama made his first campaign stop for Democratic Senate candidate Joe Sestak Monday, headlining a Philadelphia fundraiser that was expected to net a big cash haul six weeks before Election Day.
Speaking during a smaller-dollar general reception at the Pennsylvania Convention Center before a minimum $1,000-per-head dinner, Obama echoed the argument Sestak has made for months–that the two-term congressman an outsider not beholden to rigid ideology.
“The choice in this election could not be clearer and the stakes could not be higher,” Obama said to a general reception audience of several hundred supporters, according to a pool report. “Everybody’s been talking about insiders in Washington, well, Joe’s not one of the insiders who’s been part of the problem. Instead he’s been solving problems in Washington. He didn’t go there with a liberal or a conservative agenda–he went to serve the people of Pennsylvania just like he’s served his country for the past three decades.
“In Washington they make the distinction between show horses and workhorses,” added Obama, who supported Senator Arlen Specter before Specter defeated him in the May primary. “And Joe’s a workhorse.”
A Democratic source told pool reporter Tom Fitzgerald that the events would raise more than $500,000.
Continuing his efforts to set up a contrast with Republicans, Obama said: “The easiest thing to do is to not put forward any specifics and plans, but just try to ride that anger and fear all the way to the election, and that’s what’s happening right now. … A lot has changed since this last election but what hasn’t changed is the choice that we face in this country: It’s still fear vs hope, it’s still past vs. future, it’s still the choice between sliding backwards and moving forward.”
Republicans reacted quickly to Obama’s visit, with GOP candidates seeking to raise extra cash ahead of his appearance, the state party gathering reporters on a conference call and the national party denouncing Sestak as an Obama ally.
“Joe Sestak’s blind support for the President’s failed economic agenda has provided nothing but… further job loss and 9.2 percent unemployment in Pennsylvania,” Republican National Committee spokesman Parish Braden said in a statement. “With President Obama’s campaign visit for Sestak, voters are wondering if they will take the time to address the fact that thousands of jobs have been lost in the state since passage of the… Obama-Sestak ‘stimulus’ package.”
The original version of the story appears here: http://www.pa2010.com/2010/09/obama-sestak-not-one-of-the-insiders/
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