In a rare move, the DSCC is backing one of their endorsees in a contested primary with not just words but deeds. According to Roll Call's Alex Roarty, the committee will spend $425,000 on TV ads to help Katie McGinty, a former chief of staff to Gov. Tom Wolf, defeat ex-Rep. Joe Sestak in Pennsylvania's April 26 Democratic primary. The ad run is not your classic independent expenditure (which can be unlimited in size) but rather a coordinated expenditure, which Roarty says is limited to $1.9 million for the cycle. This approach allows the DSCC to work directly with McGinty, and indeed, the committee's ad reservations will replace McGinty's own.
While unusual, this sort of activity is not unheard of. In fact, the DSCC did the exact same thing in 2010—in the exact same race. Back then, it spent $541,000 trying to boost party-switching Sen. Arlen Specter, who was being challenged by none other than Sestak. The effort failed, as Sestak won 54-46, though he went on to narrowly lose to Republican Pat Toomey, who's now seeking re-election.
Is the DSCC likely to be more effective this time? It's very hard to know. The only independent poll taken all year, from Franklin & Marshall College, had Sestak up 31-14 over McGinty a few weeks ago, but a huge 46 percent of voters were undecided. (A third candidate, Braddock Mayor John Fetterman, was at 7.) That suggests a wide-open race where outside intervention could make a real difference. But even if these ads do help McGinty, they could also boomerang: Sestak is already fundraising off this latest establishment effort to aid his opponent—a tactic we've seen Bernie Sanders, for instance, use very successfully.
This also raises, once again, the question of why the Democratic establishment is so eager to stop Sestak. As we've written before, part of it may be personal pique over his run against Specter, and part of it may be a belief that Sestak isn't capable of running a campaign professional enough to take down Toomey, despite his close defeat six years ago. You have to imagine that the latter rather than the former is motivating the DSCC, and that presumably it has private polling showing that McGinty can beat Toomey but Sestak cannot, because spending almost half a million bucks merely to settle a score would be shameful.