Facing an increasingly tight fight for his political life, Sen. Pat Toomey is trying to stay on message.
But at a string of campaign appearances this week, the Pennsylvania Republican has been hounded by one consistent question: Will he support Donald Trump?
{mosads}With little more than three weeks until Election Day, Toomey remains the only vulnerable Republican up for reelection who hasn’t said whether he will support his party’s presidential nominee.
And after spending months trying to dodge Trump’s long shadow, he is facing renewed pressure to pick a side in the growing GOP schism.
As allegations of sexual assault pile up against the real estate mogul, Democrat Katie McGinty is hounding Toomey, accusing him of putting politics above “basic human decency.”
“Toomey now has the distinction of being the only Senate candidate in the entire United States of America to refuse to come clean about whether or not he supports Donald Trump,” she said.
Toomey this week denounced Trump’s 2005 comments, in which the real estate mogul discussed groping women without their consent, telling the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: “If Donald Trump committed the actions he described, that is unequivocally assault.”
But asked throughout the week if the GOP nominee’s remarks were enough move him off the fence, Toomey hedged.
He said repeatedly that he remains “unpersuaded” and hasn’t made a decision about the top of his party’s ticket.
Democrats have spent months trying to link embattled incumbents to Trump, and believe the 2005 remarks paired with this week’s onslaught of sexual assault allegations bolster their argument in the final stretch of the election.
After a handful of women came forward to allege that Trump had groped or kissed them without consent, McGinty questioned if Toomey — who her campaign has nicknamed “Fraidy-Pat” — “doesn’t believe these women.”
Toomey’s campaign didn’t respond to a request for comment Thursday about the additional allegations against Trump, which have left Republicans scrambling to reassess the nominee’s potential damage to down-ballot races.
Chris Borick, a political science professor at Muhlenberg College, predicted that without a definitive decision from Toomey, there will be “this ongoing push for him to make a declaration.”
“It doesn’t give him an out. They’ll just keep hammering for answers,” he said.
Toomey and McGinty are locked in a statistical tie, even as Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton is leading in the battleground state by 9 points, according to the latest RealClearPolitics polling average.
Charlie Gerow, a GOP strategist in Pennsylvania, said many Republicans are “cautiously optimistic” that Toomey will prevail in November.
“He’s in a very tough position, none of which he has anything to do with,” he said. “He’s had to toe a very narrow narrow line.”
Toomey has tried to create space between his campaign and Trump’s.
He first endorsed Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) for president and then made it public he had voted for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) in the Keystone State primary.
And he told reporters on Thursday that voters have a “badly flawed tier of presidential nominees.”
But he stressed that he’s been bipartisan during his time in the Senate and would stand up to whoever is in the White House next year.
“Katie McGinty can’t bring herself to say a word of criticism about her nominee because she is a rubber stamp for Hillary Clinton and a hyper-partisan that does whatever the party tells her to do,” he added.
But despite Trump’s latest scandal and his deflated Pennsylvania poll numbers, dumping the embattled GOP nominee would pose risks for Toomey.
It “probably is his best strategy to try and hedge,” unless Trump flames out, Borick said.
“I think by trying to have it both ways, he will in some ways avoid the unbridled wrath of his base,” he said. “If you go all out on Trump and say you’re not supporting him in any way … you do run the risk of angering a part of the base that might punish him.”
GOP incumbents and Senate hopefuls in a trio of battleground states — New Hampshire, Ohio and Nevada — are facing backlash from the conservative voters they’ll need to win in November after rescinding their support for Trump in the days since the 2005 tape was released.
A GOP senator who pulled his support for Trump received more than 1,000 phone calls from in-state residents on Wednesday urging him to re-endorse Trump, according to CNN, and just 44 calls against re-endorsing Trump.
Further complicating Toomey’s calculation is Trump’s penchant for lashing out.
The real estate mogul publicly railed against Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) this week after they distanced themselves from his campaign.
Gerow said Toomey’s current stance is “the best course of several unpalatable options” and recommended that the GOP senator stick to his strategy of focusing on his own reelection.
“I’m sure it’s frustrating for him to have the media constantly asking himself about something that really is extraneous to his campaign, but he’s stayed on message,” he said.
Toomey appears to on the same page, telling the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News editorial boards that he might not announce how he’ll vote before the election.
Though he’s a glaring outlier from every other GOP senator up for reelection, he isn’t the first senator to refuse to be tied to his party’s pick. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) used the same tactic in 2012, before President Obama lost West Virginia by nearly 27 points.
Endorsement aside, the biggest key to Toomey’s political fate could be whether Trump is able to stay close to Clinton in Pennsylvania, which typically goes blue during presidential election years.
Political experts and strategists say Trump needs to stay within roughly 5 points or 6 points of Clinton, or Toomey’s race becomes impossible to win.
“If Trump has more problems this month and he starts to even become a really bigger problem, does [Toomey] roll the dice?” Borick asked.
“I think what pushes him is if Trump completely disintegrates.”