Gloves off in Pat Toomey, Katie McGinty campaigns

FOX CHASE (WPVI) -- It was billed Tuesday as the kickoff of the fall campaign, but Katie McGinty came out swinging the moment she secured the Democratic nomination in May.

"We can win. Two, we have to win," McGinty said at a rally at Sheet Metal Workers Local 19 on South Columbus Boulevard.

For the rally for ward leaders and union activists, she hauled out two of her party's heavy hitters to sound the charge - Senator Bob Casey and Congressman Bob Brady.

"We need a Democratic majority, we need a senator like Katie McGinty," Casey said.

McGinty is calling incumbent Repbulican Pat Toomey "Mr. Wall Street," an enemy of the working man and woman.

"And you know he made some of his millions working in China for some secretive Chinese billionaire," McGinty said.

Toomey chose a much more subdued venue for his latest counterattack, a family market in Northeast Philadelphia, where he called McGinty a "tax and spend liberal."

"Katie McGinty is campaigning all over the state calling for about, actually over, a trillion dollars in new government spending," Toomey said.

Senator Toomey continues to try to keep Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump at more than arm's length, refusing to endorse, but saying he'd be better than Clinton.

"I'm still in the same place about that - which is waited to be persuaded," Toomey said.

Most polls show a statistical dead heat as the race heads towards November 8th.

The gloves are now coming off.

"If a sitting United States senator has not heard enough from Donald Trump to have an opinion on whether he's for him or against him, that should be disqualifying," McGinty said.

"Katie McGinty can't defend her record of pushing for hire taxes, more regulation, more job destruction, and so she's trying to change the subject," Toomey said.

The McGinty-Toomey smackdown remains prominently in the national eye.

The outcome is likely to be deeply impacted by the fate of the two opponents at the top of their party's tickets.