With the Toomey camp lately going after after Joe Sestak's earmarks, Democrats are crowing today about a story from the Inquirer's Tom Fitzgerald that the Republican got millions in such funding for his Lehigh County congressional district, before going on to criticize the process later.
Here's Tom:
Republican Pat Toomey crusaded against earmarks for most of his three terms in the U.S. House, and not long ago took a live pig to Independence Mall as he challenged his Senate-race opponent, Rep. Joe Sestak, to swear off the funding that lawmakers direct to their pet projects.
But in his first term representing the Lehigh Valley's 15th District, Toomey won at least $9 million in earmarks, including $3 million for a private company that became for a time his largest single source of campaign contributions.
. . . "Pat isn't trying to hide anything," Toomey spokeswoman Nachama Soloveichik said of Toomey's first-term requests. "He has very openly admitted he got a couple of earmarks . . . and quickly realized how out of control and how abusive the process was and said, 'Enough.' "
The private company was Allentown's Air Products & Chemicals Inc. The firm and its employees donated more than $50,000 to Toomey's 2000 and 2002 campaigns.
Earmarks requests have been public only in the past two years -- when Toomey was in Congress they were secret , and so Democrats are pressing his campaign to release his full list (just as the Toomey camp has requested of Sestak).
