Republicans say they intend to do everything they can to make a campaign issue out of efforts by the White House to push Democratic Rep. Joe Sestak out of Pennsylvania’s Senate primary, as the Obama administration continued to face questions Tuesday over the legality of its actions.
The Republican National Committee said it will highlight the issue via Twitter, online video clips and e-mail blasts to reporters ahead of November’s midterm elections, while the Senate Republicans’ campaign arm has dedicated a website to the controversy.
The campaign of Mr. Sestak’s Republican opponent, former Rep. Pat Toomey, has said it wants to return to the issues but unanswered questions about the deal keep getting in the way.
After ignoring White House entreaties to get out of the race, Mr. Sestak, a former Navy admiral, defeated five-term incumbent Sen. Arlen Specter, who switched from the Republican Party just last year, in the May 18 primary.
“This will continue to be a significant issue because if you can’t trust a politician like Joe Sestak to be upfront and honest when it comes to allegations of White House bribery, what can voters expect him to be upfront and honest about?” said Brian Walsh, spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
For months the White House has vigorously played down the matter, with press secretary Robert Gibbs sidestepping questions from reporters after Mr. Sestak said he was offered a job in exchange for dropping out of the race in a February television interview. The White House had thrown its support behind Mr. Specter, whose party switch gave Mr. Obama a key 60th vote in the Senate.
But after a reporter personally asked Mr. Obama about the charges surrounding the Sestak job offer during his press conference last week, the administration finally addressed it, absolving itself of wrongdoing in a memo released Friday afternoon.
White House Counsel Robert Bauer said former President Bill Clinton discussed an unpaid presidential advisory board position with Mr. Sestak, which he refused. The conversation was “fully consistent” with the relevant legal and ethical requirements, Mr. Bauer wrote.
On Tuesday, Mr. Gibbs said he may deserve some blame for letting the issue fester for three months, but put off reporters’ questions about inconsistencies between Mr. Sestak’s statements and the lawyers’ memo.
“Whatever’s in the memo is accurate,” he said.
But Mr. Gibbs appeared to contradict the memo’s contents by agreeing with a reporter’s statement that, as a member of the House, Mr. Sestak would not have been eligible for the job he was offered as it bars federal employees from serving. The memo said Mr. Sestak could have retained his House seat had he accepted the post.
A Democratic official said the public has accepted the explanation. For its part, the Sestak campaign on Tuesday, asked about the continued political fallout, pointed to Mr. Sestak’s response Friday when he told reporters he doesn’t expect to be dogged by the issue.
Voters are “not worried about Joe Sestak’s job. They’re worried about their job,” he said.
Randall Miller, a history professor at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, said it’s unclear how much the controversy will affect the November contest between Mr. Sestak and Mr. Toomey. But, he noted, it plays into Mr. Toomey’s efforts to paint Mr. Sestak as a Washington insider “in cahoots with the White House.”
“In one sense, Toomey doesn’t have to do anything about this,” he said. “The damage is not going to come directly from Toomey, it’s going to come from the circumstances here. And as long as Sestak has to explain it, it means he’s not going to have time to talk about something else that he wants to talk about.”
Proving that point, the Toomey campaign on Tuesday said it’s trying to talk about the issues but said questions about the discussions keep popping up.
“There are major issue differences between Pat Toomey and Joe Sestak on bailouts, health care, and spending and deficits,” Toomey spokeswoman Nachama Soloveichik said. “That’s what this race should be about. Unfortunately, the questions about this insider deal between the White House and Congressman Sestak keep getting in the way.”
The RNC meanwhile is going to do whatever it can to drive the story, spokesman Doug Heye said.
“We’ll continue to talk about this. If voters did not care about this, Joe Sestak wouldn’t be talking about it all the time,” Mr. Heye said.
Polls taken after Mr. Sestak’s primary victory - but before the White House’s Friday explanation - showed Mr. Sestak taking a slight lead in the race. He’s ahead 43 percent to 40 percent, according to a poll conducted by Research 2000 for the liberal DailyKos website. A Rasmussen Reports poll pegs the Democrat’s lead at 46 percent to 42 percent.
Mr. Miller said the polls show that “it’s anybody’s race.”
“Pennsylvania’s a hard state to peg, and this is going to be a pretty difficult year to predict anything,” he said.
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