Toomey grew up in East Providence, R.I. His father laid cable for an electric company, while his mother helped raise the family's six children by working as a secretary at the local parish. "I was raised in a Democratic household," Toomey recalls. "My dad was a card-carrying union worker and a Democratic super voter."A gifted student, Toomey earned scholarships to a Catholic private high school, LaSalle Academy, and then Harvard University. He also supplemented his scholarships with part-time jobs.
As a teenager in the 1970s he was turned off by what he observed as "a downright anti-American streak" in liberalism. "What I found very offensive was the 'blame America first' crowd, the people who suggested that there was a moral equivalence between the United States and the Soviet Union at the time, which struck me as absurd."
Toomey says he continued his rightward migration upon entering Harvard in 1980."I went to college the same year that Ronald Reagan got elected president and I had tremendous respect for Reagan, and found that he was ridiculed and held in contempt on campus," he says. "I also majored in political philosophy. I was studying competing ideas about political priorities and all of this was just gradually moving me in a more conservative direction."
After graduating Harvard in 1984, he moved to New York to work in finance, a career that required him to travel through Asia and spend a year in Hong Kong. Tired of living in New York City, Toomey made a big career shift by moving to Allentown, Pa. to start a sports bar and restaurant, Rookie's, with his brothers. It became a successful chain.
In 1997, he married Kris Duncan, a childhood friend of his sister's. His experiences in business helped seal his conservatism, he says: "I learned the power and discipline and frankly the wisdom of markets, and the incompetence of government."
Political Start
Toomey's first foray into politics came in 1994, when as a member of the Allentown Government Study Commission he helped author a plan requiring a super-majority for the city council to raise taxes.In November 1997, the Democratic congressman representing Pennsylvania's 15th district, Paul McHale, announced he would retire, and Toomey decided to run for the open House seat.
"By the late 90s, when I ran for Congress, I had become pretty well steeped in a lot of free market ideas that I'm still very hopeful about, and believe strongly in, like school choice, free trade, Social Security reform where workers could accumulate personal savings -- a number of specific ideas that I'm convinced will lead to more prosperity and greater well-being on the part of a vast majority of Americans," he says. "After the 1994 elections, when Republicans took control of Congress, I thought there was really an opportunity to advance these ideas."
Running for Congress
The 1998 Republican primary for Pennsylvania's 15th House district was made up of a six-candidate field, including two state legislators.In his campaign, Toomey advocated Social Security reform and a 17-percent flat tax, vowed never to raise taxes, and promised to serve no more than three terms if elected. He managed to narrowly win the Republican primary with 27 percent of the vote, compared with 25 percent for his next closest rival.
In the general election, he faced state Sen. Roy Afflerbach (D), who attacked Toomey for threatening Social Security and having only lived in Pennsylvania for seven years. Toomey fought back by dubbing Afflerbach "the tax man" and criticizing his support for tax increases in the state legislature.In the end, Toomey won comfortably by a 55 to 45 percent margin.
Challenging Specter
Toomey was twice reelected to his House seat, but in February 2003, as he was coming up on his pledge to only serve three terms, he announced he would challenge Specter in the 2004 Republican primary. The bitter race that followed pitted conservative activists against the Republican Party establishment, and became a classic battle of competing ideologies.
Specter, as the incumbent, enjoyed the institutional support of the Republican Party. Then-President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney campaigned for Specter, as did then-Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.).Toomey enjoyed the backing of several prominent conservatives such as publisher and former presidential candidate Steve Forbes (R) and former Reagan Attorney General Edwin Meese. Additionally, the Club for Growth raised $1 million for him, and took out another $1 million in ads on his behalf.
With Republicans in control of the White House and both chambers of Congress at the time, Specter said the race was about whether the party would be "a big tent," while Toomey urged conservatives to vote for their principles.
"Today we have complete control," Toomey said. "And the question that I am posing to Republican primary voters all across Pennsylvania is a simple one: are we going to seize this opportunity to govern with a common-sense conservative agenda, or are we going to let it slip away by re-electing a liberal who will fight our agenda?"
Toomey's message resonated with many GOP primary voters, but ultimately he came up 17,000 votes short out of about 1 million cast, despite being outspent four- to-one.
The Club for Growth
After his third and final House term expired in January 2005, Toomey joined the Club for Growth, the group that backed him in his primary fight against Specter. During his time there, the group continued to help recruit and finance Republican candidates who advocated lower taxes limited government.
But the Club continued to clash with national Republicans trying to preserve their congressional majorities because it funded economically-conservative challengers to more liberal Republican incumbents in GOP primaries. To critics, Specter among them, the group has been responsible for driving moderates out of the party and costing Republicans swing seats.
One of the more contentious decisions under Toomey's leadership was to finance Steve Laffey (R) in his 2006 primary challenge against Lincoln Chafee, then a liberal Republican senator from Rhode Island. Even though Chafee won the GOP primary, critics claim that the tough nomination fight weakened him for the general election and was responsible for handing control of the Senate to the Democrats.
Toomey strongly disputes this version of events."[W]hat is lost when Lincoln Chafee leaves the Senate?" Toomey asks. "First of all, within a matter of months, he abandoned the Republican Party formally. He's no longer even a Republican. During the presidential campaign, he publicly endorsed Barack Obama instead of John McCain. So what is it we had in the form of Lincoln Chafee? He wasn't a Republican in any meaningful sense of the word. But as for his political prospects, the man was destined to lose that race no matter what. He was in absolutely irrecoverable decline long before we got involved in the race. And take a look at his general election outcome. It wasn't close. And it wasn't because of our involvement."
In April 2009, Toomey announced he was leaving the Club for Growth to challenge Specter.
Instead, Rep. Sestak (D) beat Specter in the May 2010 primaries.
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