After stops in Harrisburg and Johnstown, Susan Clark-Sestak ended a day of campaigning Wednesday in the HUB-Robeson Center at Penn State.
About 40 people turned out for an hour-long evening appearance by Clark-Sestak, the spouse of Democratic senatorial nominee Joe Sestak. Many of the attendees were Penn State students, whom Clark-Sestak encouraged to get out the vote on Nov. 2.
Poll data released this week suggest that Sestak, a Congressman from Delaware County, trails his Republican opponent, former Allentown-area Congressman Pat Toomey, by seven percentage points. The winner in the November general election will fill the U.S. Senate seat now held by incumbent Arlen Specter.
‘We have to get every single vote we possibly can,’ said Clark-Sestak, who is an analyst at a national-security research organization. ‘ … Honestly, this (general-election day) can be a defining moment for how this country will go over the next four, six, eight years.’
She said the prospect that the tea-party movement could gain a foothold in the U.S. House or in the U.S. Senate ‘is scary to me.’ While tea-party groups appeal to far-right conservatives, she said, she believes her husband’s approach can hold a cross-party appeal for moderate Republicans and independents — not only die-hard Democrats.
Clark-Sestak underscored differences in the Sestak’s and Toomey’s records on higher-education funding and other educational initiatives. She cast Toomey as an anti-corporate-tax conservative — one who’s more conservative than former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum. She said Toomey has agitated to push the Republican Party farther to the right, away from moderates.
‘To me, that is the worst signal you could be sending,’ Clark-Sestak said, touting her husband’s emphasis on cross-party collaboration.
On policy issues, she expressed pride in the passage of the federal health-care reform bill and said that, ‘hopefully, we’ll continue to build on it.’
She said that she, over the years, has helped to inform her husband’s positions on environmental issues. Asked about the military’s ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy, Clark-Sestak did not hesitate: Her husband opposes it, she said.
Sestak served 31 years in the U.S. Navy. ‘There were clearly people he served with who were gay or lesbian,’ Clark-Sestak said, ‘and it didn’t make any difference to the job they did.’
She took all of the audience’s questions in the HUB before talking with local reporters. In an interview, Clark-Sestak said she has been making more campaign appearances since Labor Day, as the general election approaches. Her husband would have liked to have been at Penn State on Wednesday, but had U.S. House duties to attend to, she said.
At the university, she said, she hopes enthusiastic students will sustain the vote-turnout momentum seen during the last presidential election year — 2008.
‘We’re really counting on the students to get other students engaged,’ Clark-Sestak said.
Earlier coverage
