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Former SWB Yankee Brandon Laird wins beer for a year

GAR Memorial Junior/Senior High School second quarter honor roll

<p>HARRISBURG &#8212; Republican Sen. Pat Toomey already had the political balancing act of winning over middle-of-the-road voters in his quest for a second term in moderate Pennsylvania.</p><p>Now Toomey has another: distancing himself from Donald Trump.</p><p>In recent days, Toomey hedged on his long-stated intent to support the eventual GOP presidential nominee. In interviews and an editorial published in major newspapers, Toomey laid out a long list of concerns he has with the bombastic billionaire and warned: &#8220;I hope we don&#8217;t get to a point where I decide I just can&#8217;t support him.&#8221;</p><p>In doing so, he may risk alienating the Republican voters who delivered a surprising 37 percentage-point victory for Trump in Pennsylvania&#8217;s April 26 primary.</p><p>&#8220;I saw what Toomey said and did I like it? No, I didn&#8217;t like it,&#8221; said Arnold McClure, chairman of the Huntingdon County GOP.</p><p>McClure said he&#8217;ll vote for Toomey again. But &#8220;he angers me with his attitude. &#8230; Does that mean I&#8217;m some dummy who doesn&#8217;t know any better? That infuriates me.&#8221;</p><p>Toomey&#8217;s contest against Democrat Katie McGinty in the November election is considered crucial to deciding majority control of the Senate, where Republicans hold a 54-46 advantage but have to defend more than double the number of seats than Democrats.</p><p>Democrats like their chances against Toomey in Pennsylvania, where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by 4 to 3.</p><p>That portends another tight race for the senator, who scored a 2 percentage-point victory in 2010&#8217;s Republican wave and is ranked by the American Conservative Union as the 13th most conservative senator.</p><p>In a typical presidential election year, Toomey would face what Republican campaign strategists view as a narrow, but reasonable path to victory: strong Republican support, plus some Democrats and most of the independents.</p><p>This year is anything but typical.</p><p>McGinty is aggressively tying Toomey to Trump and now Toomey is trotting out a longer list of differences than agreements with Trump.</p><p>&#8220;I&#8217;m trying to make some sense of the situation we&#8217;re in and it&#8217;s pretty unusual,&#8221; he said on WAEB-AM in Allentown.</p><p>Toomey said he hopes to support Trump, but his laundry list of complaints include Trump&#8217;s lack of devotion to conservative fiscal principles, his vulgarity, and his vagueness about what he would do as president &#8212; or how.</p><p>&#8220;In short, I find his candidacy highly problematic,&#8221; Toomey wrote in a 770-word opinion piece published in The Philadelphia Inquirer and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.</p><p>In it, Toomey advised Trump to work to unite the Republican Party and the country, and to &#8220;listen more, and talk less&#8221; to win over critics. Toomey won&#8217;t vote for Hillary Clinton, the Democratic front-runner; she is &#8220;unacceptably flawed,&#8221; he wrote.</p><p>Pennsylvania&#8217;s GOP chairman, Rob Gleason, said he expects no ill-effects for Toomey from his criticism of Trump or from Trump&#8217;s divisiveness that has turned off a high percentage of voters &#8212; nearly 7 in 10, according to a recent AP-GfK poll.</p><p>&#8220;I always advise people, it&#8217;s their race. There&#8217;re no coattails anymore, good or bad,&#8221; Gleason said.</p><p>Toomey may be out of step with the majority of Pennsylvania&#8217;s Republican presidential primary voters, but not party brass. Very few GOP leaders or officials in Pennsylvania supported Trump in the primary. Former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge, the country&#8217;s first Homeland Security secretary, has said there&#8217;s &#8220;no chance&#8221; he&#8217;ll vote for Trump.</p><p>Still, the scale of Trump&#8217;s victory in Pennsylvania caught many party leaders by surprise, and some with less on the line than Toomey have fallen in line with Trump.</p><p>&#8220;We&#8217;ve got a coalition of Trump people here,&#8221; said Jim Worthington, an elected convention delegate from suburban Philadelphia. &#8220;If Toomey is not on board with Trump, well, I don&#8217;t know where I&#8217;m going to be on him.&#8221;</p><p>Said Joe Sacco, another Trump supporter from southcentral Pennsylvania: &#8220;I&#8217;ll vote for him for the good of the Republican Party, but he better start changing his ways and getting on the bandwagon, like the rest of us.&#8221;</p><style>
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<div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/web1_McGinty_AP_toned.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">McGinty </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/web1_McGinty_AP_toned.jpg</photo0><caption0>McGinty </caption0><photoCredit0></photoCredit0></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>By Marc Levy</p><p>Associated Press</p></bylineMeta></div>

Trump presents a problem for Toomey