Meanwhile, the Kochs’ have two groups active in the state attacking McGinty. Freedom Partners Action Fund has spent $7.3 million on television ads, and Americans for Prosperity, the biggest and oldest of the Kochs’ grassroots groups, has pumped about $2.4 million into canvassing, phone banks, printed materials and digital ads, mainly criticizing McGinty for her support of the Affordable Care Act.
Beth Anne Mumford, state director for the group, said they’ve made 2 million phone calls and knocked on 135,000 doors to get voters out for Toomey.
Also among the biggest Toomey supporters is Michael Bloomberg, whose super-PAC, Independence USA, has spent about $3 million supporting the Republican. Bloomberg is the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent of Bloomberg News.
The race is being complicated by the presidential contest. While McGinty has closely linked her campaign to Hillary Clinton’s, Toomey has declined to endorse his party’s nominee, Donald Trump.
Tuning Out
Pennsylvania is also a presidential battleground state, and recent polls suggest that Clinton’s lead over Trump has narrowed since new revelations about the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s probe into her handling of classified information while she was Secretary of State.
There are signs that the sordid headlines dominating the White House run are overshadowing the Senate race, raising doubts about whether the money spent on Toomey and McGinty has made much of an impact.
“I can’t believe that our candidates are having the kind of problems in the spotlight that they are,” Hollie Johns, a resident of York in the southeastern part of the state, said of Clinton and Trump.
Johns said she’s considering writing in a candidate for president, and as for the Senate race, she hasn’t been following it.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.