Pat Toomey is increasingly looking like a man with the wind at his back. Toomey, leading in the polls by six according to Rasmussen, picked up a coveted endorsement yesterday from Pennsylvania’s statewide Fraternal Order of Police.
The Order boasts some 41,000 members across the Commonwealth, and represents a significant momentum-builder as the campaign heads into the frenetic final weeks before election day.
“I was happy to support legislative grants that make sure our law enforcement community has the resources that we need,” said Toomey, “especially in this post-9/11 world when we ask more of our police officers. It’s incumbent on us to make sure they’ve the resources to carry out that mission.”
The endorsement was held in the upper hall of Philadelphia’s Lodge 5 of the Fraternal Order of Police, in the shadow of the city center’s skyscrapers.
Both Toomey and Joe Sestak, his Democrat rival, had to appear before FOP officials to pitch their vision for Pennsylvania and discuss how they would support the priorities of law enforcement.
“When it comes to how we handle foreign terrorists, there’s a real difference of opinion here,” continued Toomey. “My own view is that when we capture enemy combatants, foreign terrorists on foreign soil, we ought to give them a military trial, a military tribunal on a military base.”
“Joe Sestak is very adamant that even Khalid Sheikh Mohammed himself, the admitted mastermind of 9/11, should be given a civilization trial, including right here in Pennsylvania. I think that’s a very misguided view. I think it introduces risks that are totally unnecessary and inappropriate — national security risks.”
Toomey also used to event to laud the work of law enforcement, and cited his working relationship with the Allentown Fraternal Order during his time as a Congressmen from 1999 to 2005.
Michael P. Meehan, legal counsel to the Republican City Committee, was also in attendance.