More of this please:
Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Katie McGinty is launching a new ad on Monday highlighting her support for eliminating the gender pay gap.
McGinty has targeted much of her messaging in recent weeks toward working women, unveiling a set of economic policy proposals last week aimed at aiding women and tailoring diner-stop events around that theme.
The new 30-second spot, which her campaign says will be rotated in among other ads statewide, shows a woman working late in an office as McGinty describes women as working just as long and hard as their male counterparts.
"So why does she make 21 percent less?" the mother of three teenage daughters asks. "For my daughters and yours, I'll fight for equal pay for women. Families need it. You've earned it."
The new ad is McGinty's third television spot of the campaign. An initial spot began airing two weeks ago, talking about boosting wages, protecting Social Security and making college more affordable.
She released another ad last week targeting Republican U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey over his opposition to consider a Suprme Court nominee this year to replace late Justice Antonin Scalia. (Toomey released a statement after President Obama announced Merrick Garland as his nominee, saying that he would consider Garland if he was nominated by the next president.)
McGinty has been increasing her ad push with a little over a month before the April primary date with an emphasis raising wages and tackling income inequality. She’s a strong support of raising the national minimum wage to $15. This new ad focusing on tackling the wage gap is a great strategy, especially since the entire Pennsylvania delegation in Washington is male dominated and she could be Pennsylvania’s first female U.S. Senator. She also recently opened up about how Donald Trump’s anti-immigration rhetoric isn’t just appalling it’s also personal for her and her family:
Several years ago, Katie McGinty and her husband Karl adopted two of their three daughters from Mother Teresa’s orphanage in India. She says one of the girls recently asked McGinty a “chilling” question about the GOP front-runner for president, and what it might mean for her.
“As Donald Trump started to gain momentum, my one daughter came to me and asked me, ‘will I be allowed to stay here?'” McGinty recalls. “That’s the kind of fear a guy like Trump creates. I told her, ‘you are an American and this is your country as much as it is Donald Trump’s.”
McGinty, the former chief of staff to Gov. Tom Wolf, says the hostility in the current political climate is unlike any she’s seen in recent history.
“I think we are at a very important crossroads in our country,” she says. “There is deep anxiety and pain out there. We need leaders who will reach into that pain and pull us forward with hope and opportunity, and bring people together again.”
Sen. Toomey’s refusal to consider President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, in keeping with GOP party leaders’ position is another example, she says, that hits closer to home.
“It’s a consistent pattern, part of Sen. Toomey’s politics. His ideology comes first, and the people of Pennsylvania are a distant second.”
If you would like to donate and get involved with McGinty’s campaign, click here.