Koch network super-PAC hits Dem Pa. Senate contender

A top Koch network group launched a new ad on Thursday accusing Democratic Senate nominee Katie McGinty of caring more about profiting from previous positions than creating jobs for Pennsylvanians. 

Freedom Partners Action Fund, a super-PAC that spearheads the conservative donor network helmed by billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch, announced a $3 million TV and digital ad buy that attacks McGinty for favoring companies when she was serving as the state’s environmental protection secretary and later working on the board of one of the companies and making a six-figure salary.

“So whose job does she care about more?” the ad’s narrator says. “Yours or hers?”

{mosads}McGinty, a former chief of staff to Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf (D), will take on vulnerable Republican Sen. Pat Toomey in November. The race could help determine which party controls the majority in the upper chamber. The Democratic-leaning state went to President Obama in both 2008 and 2012.

Toomey holds a significant cash advantage over McGinty. But in a recent survey from Quinnipiac University, the two were neck and neck, with Toomey leading by 1 point, within the poll’s margin of error.

In releasing the add, Freedom Partners spokesman Bill Riggs said in a statement, “Katie McGinty steered millions of dollars in subsidies to favored companies, and then took a six-figure job on the board of one of those companies as soon as she left office. She put her own self-interests before taxpayers and got ahead at Pennsylvania’s expense. Hardworking taxpayers deserve a senator who will take on special interests, not someone who knows how to rig the system for their own personal gain.” 

McGinty’s campaign hit back at the new ad campaign, calling the spot “false” and instead shifting the blame onto Toomey and the Koch brothers for job losses in the state. 

“The reality is Pat Toomey and the Koch Brothers are responsible for this loss of Pennsylvania jobs because they fought against tax credits that would have allowed a company to stay competitive,” McGinty spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said in a statement. “Toomey – the best Senator Wall Street and the Koch Brothers ever had – is going to need all the help he can get to hide his abysmal record of putting his special interest allies ahead of Pennsylvania’s middle class families.”

This is the first time Freedom Partners has waded into the Pennsylvania Senate race, but the group has already launched ad campaigns in states with competitive races including Wisconsin, Nevada and Ohio.