Montgomery County board chair starts bid for Toomey’s Senate seat
Val Arkoosh, chair of the Montgomery County board of Commissioners, launched her bid for U.S. Senate Monday, touting her experience as a physician and head of the state’s third largest county — and one of its most Democratic.
Arkoosh, a Democrat from Springfield Township, has led her county’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, elevating her profile in the region over the last year.
“We’re at a critical moment,” Arkoosh said in a launch video released Monday. “I’m fiercely determined to do what’s right — to stand up to Trump Republicans and push back on their harmful agenda. Instead, we’ll build a future that lifts people up, rebuild our infrastructure with good-paying union jobs, protect our planet by addressing the climate crisis, and finish the job we started to lower the cost of health care.”
Arkoosh was appointed to fill a vacancy on the Montgomery County board of Commissioners in January of 2015, a year after an unsuccessful run for Congress. She won election to a full fouryear term in November 2015 and again in November 2019 and was unanimously elected chair in 2016.
Arkoosh, 60, is the first female chair of Montgomery County. If elected to the Senate seat currently held by Republican Sen. Pat Toomey, she would be Pennsylvania’s first female senator.
Toomey has announced that he will not seek reelection, setting up a heated competition for an open seat, one that could determine control of the Senate and how much support President Joe Biden has in the second half of his first term.
Arkoosh is the third Democrat in a growing field that already includes Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, of Allegheny County, and State Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta, of Philadelphia. Other Democrats widely seen as possible candidates include U.S. Reps. Madeleine Dean (Montgomery), Chrissy Houlahan (Chester) and Conor Lamb (Allegheny), as well as Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney and Sen. Sharif Street. Street is expected to launch an exploratory committee Friday.
Lower Merion developer Jeff Bartos is running on the Republican side, and others, including former U.S. Rep. Ryan Costello of Chester County, are considering it.
Arkoosh makes the second of three Montgomery County commissioners seeking higher office. Republican Commissioner Joe Gale is running for governor.
Her home-base in heavily Democratic Montgomery County could be an asset in a Democratic primary. Biden won the county of 830,000, with a margin 50% larger than Hillary Clinton’s in 2016 and double President Barack Obama’s in 2012. Montgomery had the farthest shift leftward in November of any county in the state.
“I don’t see how you win Pennsylvania without Montgomery County,” Arkoosh told The Inquirer in December. “Montgomery County kind of represents many different aspects of Pennsylvania, just within one county, so if you’re successful here, I think it [positions] you well to be able to be successful across the state.”
In the 2016 Democratic primary for lieutenant governor, which Fetterman won, Philadelphia and its four collar counties accounted for 41% of all Democratic votes.
Arkoosh signaled in her launch video that she will run on her background as a physician turned public health advocate and educator. As president of the National Physicians Alliance, Arkoosh helped fight for the passage of the Affordable Care Act. She is a former chair and program director in the Department of Anesthesiology at the Drexel University College of Medicine and worked on faculty at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.
“In 23 years in operating and emergency rooms, I’ve seen my share of tragedy,” she said in her launch video. “The trauma of gunshot victims, denials by insurance companies and huge disparities in health care based on race, gender and income.”
Arkoosh was front and center of the state’s early response to the pandemic when a series of initial cases were reported in Montgomery County. Philadelphia’s suburban counties have more recently butted heads with state officials over vaccine distribution, arguing their regions hadn’t received sufficient doses. Last week the state announced those counties will receive an increased supply of single-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine doses.
Arkoosh lost a four-person 2014 primary to represent what was then Pennsylvania’s 13th district to Brendan Boyle, who went on to win the seat. Boyle, who had been considering a run for Senate, said this weekend he would not run.
Arkoosh has tapped some key personnel for her campaign, including pollster Jefrey Pollock and direct-mail consultant Fiona Conroy, who’s worked on statewide campaigns in Pennsylvania and successfully managed the 2012 reelection campaign of Sen. Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat. Communications director Rachel Petri worked on the campaigns of Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown and Cal Cunningham’s bid for Senate in North Carolina, and campaign manager Tiernan Donohue worked on Sen. Mark Kelly’s campaign in Arizona.