Leach gets ‘encouraging’ feedback about run for Congress
Dem state senator says he’ll announce on July 1 whether he’ll campaign against GOP’s Meehan
State Sen. Daylin Leach would not reveal Friday whether he is gearing up for a 2018 run in the 7th Congressional District, but did say information his team gathered about the prospect was “encouraging beyond our wildest dreams.”
Leach, D-17 of Lower Merion, put feelers out earlier this year with an email to constituents and apparently liked what he heard. He said he would officially announce on July 1 whether he plans to challenge Republican incumbent Pat Meehan of Chadds Ford. One constituent passing by a Leach-sponsored Alex’s Lemonade Stand event at Ludington Library Friday said he should go for it.
“I like most of his policies and I think he’s fair – I think he cares about everybody, not just the people in his party,” the unidentified Radnor man said.
Leach said the nation is facing a slew of issues more intensely than it has in some time, especially in the realm of economic anxiety. He said income disparities are now more pronounced than they have been in 80 years and are disproportionately impacting the poor and working class who are struggling to make ends meet while corporate profits and Wall Street are seeing record highs – a situation Leach said was “unsustainable” and being exacerbated by the current administration.
Expect that to be a running theme of a Leach campaign, should one emerge. A staunch liberal who regularly lambasts President Donald Trump in news releases and on Twitter (most famously calling him a “s--gibbon” in one February tweet), Leach reiterated exactly how he feels about the chief executive Friday.
“He‘s narcissistic, he’s a bully and he is indifferent or hostile to things that we consider to be basic American values, whether it’s a free press, whether it’s an independent judiciary, whether it’s the rule of law, whether it’s the obligation to tell the truth,” he said. “These are things that a society cannot effectively operate without and it is important for people to know that this is not normal.”
But Leach said there is a risk that Trump’s behavior is becoming normalized and that the American people have grown dangerously numb to his antics. While many Republicans feel the same way, Leach said there appears to be a leadership vacuum in Washington from a right wing that has largely put party loyalty over an obligation to speak truth to power.
“We need somebody in Congress who’s going to be aggressively addressing these issues,” Leach said. “… Donald Trump once famously said that if I shot someone on Fifth Avenue, I wouldn’t lose any votes and I feel in many ways that’s true. It certainly appears to be true among Republicans in Congress.”
For all that, though, Leach said he would not be a pure obstructionist if elected. He noted he has worked with conservative colleagues to pass bipartisan social legislation including human trafficking and medical marijuana bills. He also pointed to policy issues the president raised on the campaign trail that Leach agrees with, such as paid family leave, raising the minimum wage and investing in infrastructure. If Trump pushed for legislation on those issues, Leach said he would back him.
“I think I have been a leader, whether you agree with me or not, on a large percentage of the major issues that came before the body politic in Pennsylvania in recent years,” he said. “The one overarching promise I made to my constituents when I ran for the House and then for the Senate was, ‘You will know I am there’. And I think everyone across the political spectrum would agree that I’ve kept that promise.”
Should he throw his hat in the ring, Leach would first face a growing list of Democratic hopefuls in the primary that so far includes attorney Dan Muroff, bioengineer Molly Sheehan, realtor Elizabeth Moro and information technology consultant Drew McGinty.
Meehan has not commented on any of his prospective opponents.