Bartos declares candidacy for U.S. Senate in Pa.
HARRISBURG — Jeff Bartos is formally launching his campaign for Pennsylvania’s wide-open U.S. Senate race, thehighest-profile Republican candidate so far to declare for the seat.
Mr. Bartos, the Republican Party’s unsuccessful nominee for lieutenant governor in 2018, has said he was seriously considering a run and filed paperwork to run last month.
On Monday, the suburban Philadelphia real estate investor and longtime GOP fundraiser updated his campaign website to say that he is running.
He declared his candidacy on Twitter, using an expletive to say he’d get things done, perhaps a throwback to a slogan in paraphernalia used by former President Donald Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign.
“It’s time to make sure that the average Pennsylvanian has a fighting chance to live their own American Dream,” he wrote.
The Montgomery County resident is playing up his roots in Berks County and his work over the past year as a co-founder of the Pennsylvania 30 Day Fund, a nonprofit that raised more than $3 million to distribute as forgivable loans to small businesses in Pennsylvania struggling through the pandemic.
Mr. Bartos originally started running for U.S. Senate in 2017 before switching to the lieutenant governor’s race after then-U.S. Rep. Lou Barletta joined the Senate stakes with Mr. Trump’s backing.
Mr. Bartos, 48, has longtime connections to GOP campaign donors and political elite through his work fundraising for candidates. He also served briefly as the state party’s finance chair and has the personal wealth to write his campaign a big check.
The Senate seat in the presidential battleground is being left open after two-term Republican U. S. Sen. Pat Toomey announced in October that he would not run again.
Mr. Trump has not yet weighed in to endorse a would-be candidate in the Republican field, although several former administration figures are considering running.
The race for the Democratic nomination is already crowded.
Already declared are Lt. Gov. John Fetterman and state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta of Philadelphia, while several others say they are considering or will consider a run. They include state Sen. Sharif Street, who is also the vice chair of the state Democratic Party, and U.S. Reps. Brendan Boyle and Chrissy Houlahan.
Mr. Bartos enters the race at time when the Republican Party is divided over Mr. Trump and the state party fought almost to a tie over whether to formally censure Mr. Toomey for voting to convict Mr. Trump in the former president’s second impeachment trial last month.
Mr. Bartos, who comes from a county that voted decisively against Mr. Trump, has said that he voted twice for Mr.Trump and supports what he accomplished in office. On Monday, he invoked Mr. Trump as a fighter for the forgotten.
“During the Trump Administration, millions of Pennsylvanians who had felt abandoned and forgotten had someone fighting for them in Washington and delivering real results for their communities,” Mr. Bartos wrote in a statement announcing his candidacy.
Mr. Bartos does not suggest that the election was stolen from Mr. Trump and has said he believes Mr. Trump should have ended his efforts to overturn the outcome several weeks after the election when federal courts were rejecting his legal challenges.
But Mr. Bartos does not assign blame to Mr. Trump for the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, unlike Mr. Toomey, U.S. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of suburban Philadelphia and Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell.
Mr. Bartos is also joining a Republican movement to tighten voting laws in the wake of Mr. Trump’s loss in November to Democrat Joe Biden.