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Despite being abandoned by the establishment-class of the Democratic Party, Joe Sestak still leads Katie McGinty by 10 points in a recent poll.
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Katie McGinty, Harry Reid’s chosen candidate, earned less than 8 percent of the vote in her last statewide bid and remains largely unknown across the state.
- John Fetterman is receiving national attention for his unorthodox style and "has some friends on the inside" including Allyson Schwartz, a former Philadelphia-area congresswoman who is bucking her party and renting Fetterman her lists.
Splintered Primary is Latest Problem for Pennsylvania Democrats
By Brent Scher
October 15, 2015
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Harper Polling found in September that McGinty was trailing her main primary opponent, Joe Sestak, by 10 percentage points, and a Quinnipiac University poll released last week found that Sestak is ahead of McGinty in other key measures.
McGinty remains largely unknown in the state, with 72 percent of voters saying they don’t know enough about her to say whether they view her favorably. Sestak is also relatively unknown, with 59 percent of voters saying the same.
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McGinty has also not performed well in recent statewide elections. She ran for governor in 2014, and got less than 5 percent of the vote in the Democratic primary for the seat.
Although Reid argued that McGinty’s support from the eventual winner, Tom Wolf, would help, the poll found that he too is viewed unfavorably by a margin of 41-44 percent.
A major reason for Wolf’s unfavorable ratings is his failure to bring an end to the state’s current budget stalemate. McGinty, who was in Wolf’s administration until she resigned in late July, was considered to be a major reason that there had been no progress. McGinty’s relationship with Republicans in the legislature was so bad that she was excluded from budget talks.
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Fetterman has received national attention for his unorthodox style in transforming a dying steel town, and he has quickly managed to gain traction among progressives.
His campaign is being run by Bill Hyers, who was the Pennsylvania director of President Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign and ran New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s successful mayoral bid. Fetterman showed that he should be taken seriously early by raising an impressive $170,000 just two weeks into his young campaign.
He became the first candidate in the race to hit the television airwaves on Tuesday night, airing a well produced ad during the Democratic primary debate on CNN.
The close primary could become the biggest problem for the state’s Democratic Party, which has already had more than its fair share to deal with this year.
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