Toomey censure remains on hold with Pennsylvania Republicans

Feb. 27—As former President Trump prepared for his first public appearance before the national Conservative Political Action Conference on Sunday, the Pennsylvania Republican State Committee remained stalled on demands by county leaders that the state GOP censure Sen. Pat Toomey for his vote to convict Trump for incitement of insurrection.

What was to have been a vote to spank the Lehigh Valley Republican and double down on state GOP support for the former president ended just before 11:30 Wednesday night when technical problems scuttled efforts to conduct a statewide vote among about 250 committee members who gathered to debate the issue over Zoom.

The closed-door meeting ended in a recess with a motion to amend a statement to include a censure vote on hold.

Censure, a formal public expression of disapproval, carries no penalties. Many Trump supporters, however, were anxious to go on the record with their displeasure with Toomey, a lame-duck senator.

Westmoreland County GOP Committee Chair Bill Bretz said all 10 of his state committee members were online for the statewide Zoom call. The county GOP executive committee previously voted unanimously to censure Toomey. Bretz conceded there is some dispute over whether a heretofore unheard of censure vote at the state level would signal a split in the party, but he insisted that is not the case.

"But people were universally disappointed in Toomey's decision not to defend the president," he said.

He said party leaders indicated the meeting would resume in the near future.

Party officials in Washington County voted to censure Toomey even before he voted to convict Trump. His vote to allow the trial to go forward was enough to draw their ire.

Washington County Chair David Ball later said his members believe Toomey should have voted to support his constituents, not his conscience.

In Indiana County, GOP committee members were so incensed about the impeachment vote that they voted to censure both Toomey and Democratic Sen. Bob Casey at their monthly meeting Thursday.

Indiana GOP Chair Randy Degenkolb said the group also passed a second resolution.

"The second resolution was a 'Unity Resolution,' which expressed the committee's support of President Trump and their commitment to unity as Republicans," Degenkolb said.

Their sentiments echo a hard right turn across the Pennsylvania GOP.

On Jan. 6, eight of nine Pennsylvania congressional Republicans, who questioned President Biden's victory in the state, voted to discard the state's Electoral College votes just hours after an angry mob of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol.

More recently, Westmoreland County Republicans nominated Trump House creator Leslie Baum Rossi to run for a vacancy in the 59th legislative district in a special election this spring.

And, in Lehigh County on the state's eastern border where Toomey grew up, Republicans were scheduled to host first- term GOP Congresswoman and QAnon adherent Lauren Bobert, as the keynote speaker on Zoom at their Lincoln Day Dinner on Saturday.

Toomey, 59, a two-term fiscal conservative who has broken occasionally with Trump on tariff issues, announced his intent to step down from public office at the end of his term in 2022. He voted to support the former president when House Democrats filed articles of impeachment a year earlier and said he voted for Trump in the Nov. 3 election.

But he broke with his party and Trump last month, joining six other GOP senators in the unsuccessful vote to convict Trump of incitement of insurrection. Two of those senators, Richard Burr, R-North Carolina, and Bill Cassidy, R-Louisiana, already have been censured by their states' Republicans for voting to convict Trump.

Toomey has consistently defended his vote and said he believes he would have voted based on the evidence even if he had opted to seek reelection.

In a recent radio interview, he pushed back against those who insisted his vote should have reflected their support for Trump rather than his conscience.

"I'm not elected to be a weather vane or a pollster. I'm elected to do what is right for Pennsylvania, and that is what I do," Toomey said.

Former GOP congressman Charlie Dent, who opted against seeking reelection to his eastern Pennsylvania seat after Trump's election, called the push to censure Toomey the equivalent of "political malpractice" by angry party leaders.

"They're trying to shrink the party," Dent said.

Some party leaders expressed similar sentiments.

Political scientist Joe DiSarro, chairman of the political science department at Washington & Jefferson College and a longtime state committee member, said he believes the party would be better off clinging to its conservative roots as the party of Reagan rather than pursuing vengeance against Toomey.

Likewise, Allegheny County Chair Sam DeMarco has questioned the wisdom of a censure vote, saying it could narrow the confines of the party's big tent.

Lowman Henry, a Westmoreland County native who directs the Lincoln Institute for Public Policy and is a member of the GOP state committee from Dauphin County, also questioned the move to censure Toomey, referring to it as a circular firing squad.

"Dragging out this issue is backward looking. We all agree that we disagree with Pat Toomey. ... But at the end of the day, even if you censure him, what have you accomplished? We need to focus on getting a constitutional amendment (to limit the governor's emergency declaration powers) passed, winning a judicial seat and looking to make sure the activist base is animated for change," Henry said.

Deb Erdley is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Deb at 724-850-1209, derdley@triblive.com or via Twitter .