AP source: Barletta to seek U.S. Senate seat held by Casey

HARRISBURG, PA. » Republican U.S. Rep. Lou Barletta of Pennsylvania, who was elected as a crusader against illegal immigration and helped cheerlead Donald Trump to victory last year, has told GOP officials and activists that he has decided to run for the U.S. Senate seat now held by Democrat Bob Casey.

A person familiar with the discussions told The Associated Press that Barletta began telling party officials of his decision last week, several months after he began considering it. The person spoke on condition of anonymity Monday because Barletta has not yet made his plans public.

In a text message Monday, Barletta said that his conversations have been “very positive” and that he will announce his decision in a few weeks.

“Continuing to go through process. Been talking to a lot of people,” Barletta wrote.

Barletta, 61, is in his fourth term representing a House district that stretches from south-central Pennsylvania’s rolling farms through northeastern Pennsylvania’s anthracite coal fields.

Barletta, a staunch Trump supporter in Congress, would quickly become the most recognizable name in a field of a halfdozen would-be challengers to Casey, the 57-year-old son of a late ex-governor and a fierce critic of the Republican president.

Barletta has supported Trump-backed legislation to overhaul the American health care system and introduced a bill to fund the construction of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border to help Trump fulfill a key campaign promise.

Barletta won his House seat during the Republican midterm wave of 2010, catapulted by the attention he received while mayor of the small city of Hazleton for cracking down on immigrants in the country illegally.

Hazleton approved Barletta’s measures in 2006, denying permits to businesses that hire people in the country illegally and fining landlords who rent to them, but they were never enforced before the U.S. Supreme Court struck them down in 2014.