Five Dems outline their case against Meehan in the 7th

MEDIA » Five Democratic candidates vying for U.S. Rep. Pat Meehan’s seat in the 7th District race spoke to more than 65 individuals Tuesday at the VFW Hall in Media on how to pave the liberal vision moving forward.

The event was hosted by Delco PA Indivisible, “a progressive organization with over 1,000 members dedicated to reimagining and re-envisioning our constitutional democracy through courageous and nonpartisan acts of resistance,” they offered working groups to pitch questions to the candidates regarding a variety of issues.

Meehan did not attend. The winner of next spring’s primary election will face him in the fall.

From right to left, Dan Muroff, state Sen. Daylin Leach, Molly Sheehan, Drew McGinty and Elizabeth Moro were pitched questions relating to abortion, environmental legislation, health care, gun control, protecting the rights of LGBTQ people and economic advancement for minorities.

Relating to some of the primary goals of the candidates, the theme of economic prosperity and health care as a human right were common among the mixed bag of progressive and moderate liberals. In their sights were the tax bill which passed a committee vote in the U.S. Senate on Tuesday, and the ongoing deconstruction of the Affordable Care Act.

“Economic insecurity,” said Leach, D-17 of Lower Merion, “is corrosive to our society, and destructive to the cohesiveness of our culture.”

McGinty, an information technology consultant running for his first elected office, asked how people will be able to afford to live with rising health care costs.

“It’s hard to be happy when you’re not economically secure,” McGinty said.

Muroff, an attorney and former chief of staff for U.S. Reps. Jim McGovern of Massachusetts and Joe Hoeffel of Montgomery County, said that tax reform is of utmost importance, but not in the damaging way it is currently drafted.

Moro, a real estate agent from Kennett, recalled entering vacant homes after the housing market collapse.

“They were tricked by predatory lenders,” Moro said. “I remember walking into homes with fists punched through walls.”

A rift on the issue of single-payer health insurance, however, saw a divide among the group with Moro, Sheehan and Leach supporting, with McGinty and Muroff saying that the ACA was the first step in the right direction.

“The ACA addressed three things: Payer, patient and how it’s delivered,” McGinty said. “All three need to be addressed, not just how it’s paid for.”

Sheehan called singlepayer insurance the “humane” thing to do.

“Single payer is the only fiscally responsible way to offer health care for the entire country,” said Sheehan, a bioengineer at the University of Pennsylvania who called for patent reform to enable more pharmaceutical diversity in an open market, more drug tests on women to expose potential side-effects and universal system that transfers medical information between doctors.

Muroff, said fixing the ACA would be his first act of business in the House, touching on losing a sister to opioid addiction and vowing protect those who seek addiction treatment.

On protecting the environment, Sheehan was the first to strike on Sunoco’s Mariner East II pipeline, calling the unfinished project “a colossal failure.”

“Propose legislation that would avoid this ... (they’re exploiting) a loophole, the oil and gas industries have so many exemptions to not have state or federal agencies to oversee,” Sheehan said, calling for more federal oversight since the pipelines cross state borders.

McGinty pledged to work across the aisle in ways his democratic colleagues would not be able, citing his own shift to sustainable energies on the road and at home.

Muroff said the call is urgent to pursue clean energy.

“No jobs or future in coal,” Muroff said. “There’s a future in solar and wind and I’m committed to driving that agenda.”

And in terms of their ultimate opponent Meehan, whom the five Dems agreed they were vying to be the most electable candidate to face him, they said it was imperative to disrupt the current conservative agenda.

“Meehan has failed time and time again to get people what they need and it’s time for him to go,” McGinty said. “As a moderate democrat, I can get 17 percent of Republican voters to come over and help me defeat Meehan.”

“This president has spit in the eye of everything we hold dear,” Moro said. “And Pat Meehan has stood silently.”

Leach said he was initially reluctant to run, but he grew “increasingly frustrated” before throwing his hat in the ring.

“I’ve been very proud of being a progressive,” Leach said. “I want to run around and brag about what we’ve done.”

Sheehan said following the recent wave of Democratic victories, it was important to find the future of the party.

“I really believe justice begins with firm values,” Sheehan said. “But it’s executed by putting in the hard work and coming up with solutions.”

Muroff said voters should have “an eye towards the strongest candidate to defeat Meehan.”

“Remember, he didn’t just vote for this tax bill, he wrote it,” Muroff said.