Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
Leach: ‘Attacks’ on family led his decision to nix bid for Congress
State Sen. Daylin Leach, D-17 of Lower Merion, has withdrawn his bid for Congress this year.
“I’ve decided it is just not worth it,” Leach wrote in a Facebook post Saturday night, citing “attacks” on his family.
Leach, 56, said that serving in Congress has become “unappealing” and he would rather spend time with his teenage children during their last years of childhood than staying at a Quality Inn in Washington, D.C., or making four hours of fundraising calls a day.
Leach announced his candidacy in the 7th Congressional District in July, at a time when congressional boundaries and incumbent battles seemed set in stone.
Much has changed since then, however. Seventh District incumbent Republican Pat Meehan of Chadds Ford decided not to seek re-election following a series of revelations that he had expressed a romantic interest in a former staffer and paid her approximately $40,000 out of his office budget to settle allegations of sexual harassment.
Leach also suspended his campaign in December after he was accused of numerous instances of either inappropriately touching women or making sexually charged jokes that left some feeling uncomfortable.
Then came the “remedial congressional redistricting plan” adopted by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court last week that placed Leach in the 4th District, encompassing Montgomery County.
Leach said Friday that he would look into continuing his campaign there, but first wanted to discuss it with his family over the weekend.
In his Facebook post, Leach said he lost interest in running for Congress a couple of years ago when the institution “devolved into a poisonous miasma
of dysfunction,” but that changed with the election of President Donald Trump.
“As destructive as I told people he would be as I campaigned for Hillary (Clinton) in 2016, his awfulness exceeded all of my expectations,” said Leach. “I saw an existential threat to all the progress we have made the past 85 years.”
Leach said he was prepared to be attacked as an outspoken progressive, but recently learned that he was “profoundly naïve” about some things, which he expressed in a letter to the Philadelphia Inquirer last month.
“I learned that I have been largely oblivious to the nature of power dynamics and privilege, both between men and women
and between employers and employees,” he wrote in that letter. “… I now understand that people, especially young women, might be reluctant to approach me with concerns about humor they aren’t comfortable with.”
Leach also described himself as a “somewhat touchy person” and said it never occurred to him that others might not be all right with that.
“I believe the people who have spent the most time with me the past few months would say that I am making a dedicated effort to listen and learn,” Leach wrote in his Facebook post. “Some people, most of whom I have never met and don’t know anything about me personally, seem unwilling to accept that.”
Leach said “attacks” against his family, including his children, have continued and he has decided that running for Congress is simply not worth it.
He concluded the Facebook post by indicating he plans to continue serving in the Pennsylvania Senate, where he was first elected in 2008. Leach won re-election in 2012 and again in 2016 following a failed bid for the U.S. House of Representatives in 2014. The seat is up for election again in 2020. Leach did not specifically say in his post whether he intends to seek a fourth term.