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Bartos outlines campaign at meet and greet

Times Observer photo by Josh Cotton Bob Willman, right, walks Commonwealth Court candidate Stacy Wallace, left, and U.S. Senate hopeful Jeff Bartos, through White Cane Coffee’s offerings during a meet and greet held at the shop Tuesday morning.

Pennsylvania’s 2022 Senate race is going to be in the national spotlight.

Both major parties eye the seat of retiring Sen. Pat Toomey — Republicans because they hold it now and Democrats because of President Biden’s victory in the Commonwealth.

It’s a crowded field — six Republicans and nine Democrats have declared their candidacy with the distinct possibility of more hats entering the ring in the coming months.

One of those candidates — Republican Jeff Bartos — was in Warren County Tuesday morning for a meet and greet at White Cane Coffee.

“We are running an optimistic, forward looking campaign,” Bartos said, rooted in the belief that all Americans want a better life for their families.

Times Observer photo by Josh Cotton If you saw the large bus parked at White Cane Coffee Tuesday morning, know it was exactly what it said it was. Tuesday marked day nine of a bus tour that Jeff Bartos, a candidate for the seat of retiring U.S. Senator Pat Toomeny, has undertaken with stops in each of the state’s 67 counties.

Bartos is on a statewide bus tour — Warren County marked the start of Day 9 with about 20 counties to go.

As he’s heard from voters across the Commonwealth — several themes have become clear. One is particularly important in this age of hyperpartisanship – “the issues that united far exceed the issues that divide.”

The Montgomery County Republican owns a contracting company and several real estate firms. He ran an unsuccessful campaign for lieutenant governor in 2018 alongside gubernatorial candidate Scott Wagner.

He’s styled this four “Fighting for Pennsylvania.”

So what does that mean?

Bartos said the idea originated at the outset of the pandemic when he saw a “huge need” from “small businesses that might not make it.”

In response, he co-founded the Pennsylvania 30 Day Fund to provide funds to small businesses. They’ve raised $3.6 million and made $3,000 forgivable loan awards in all 67 counties.

According to Ash Khare, state GOP committeeman, three businesses in Warren County received funding from the Fund – White Cane Coffee, Snuffy’s and Icyy Ink.

Bartos said the criteria were simple – a business needed to have been in operation at least one year, have between three and 30 employees and be owned and based in Pennsylvania.

They also were intentional to reach out to every small business owner.

“I had the privilege to speak with over 600,” Bartos said. “Those conversations fuel the fire for this campaign. I don’t need a focus group to tell what’s on the hearts and minds. I lived it on those phone calls.”

When Toomey announced his retirement, Bartos said he felt like he needed to take that fight to the “floor of the Senate.

“Fighting for Main St. is emblematic of the type of senator I’ll be,” he said, calling Pennsylvania an “incredibly bold, diverse, beautiful state with special communities in all 67 counties.”

While this bus tour will have him in all 67 counties in just 12 days, he committed that, if elected, he’d visit each county each year.

Bartos said this tour has been as much listening as sharing ideas but he’s consistently hearing the same challenges in communities north of I-80 – the roads are “atrocious,” broadband is “absolutely not acceptable,” cell service lacks. “There remains a feeling that I get from people that live… fellow Pennsyvanians, north of 80, feel ignored by career politicians.”

He isn’t the undercard in this race as he was when running for lieutenant governor and he explained that he’s invited state-wide judicial candidates to travel with him on this tour and also been supporting school board candidates across the Commonwealth.

“This is lived experience for me,” he said, calling it the “privilege and honor of a lifetime” to be invited into people businesses, farms, etc. in 2018 “and that’s exactly the spirit we’ve carried forward in this campaign.”

One of the issues he’s been hammering is the lack of labor many businesses are experiencing.

He said a bar owner in Cameron County asked him to make one promise — don’t do stupid things.

“I can make that promise,” Bartos said, before criticizing Speaker Nancy Pelosi for holding up relief funding and then the Biden administration’s decision “to unleash this avalanche of debt and government spending as we were coming out of the pandemic.” That included expanded unemployment benefits “just at the time small business was looking forward to opening up.”

It’s no real secret that we live in divisive times. Does a forward thinking message play well in the current political environment?

“(I) have all the confidence we can win the primary and general election with a message that brings Pennsylvaians together,” he said, and develop “goals and solutions to these shared challenges. I wake up optimistic thinking I have a responsibility to lead with that forward looking optimism, returning to basic principles….”

“(I) want to play a part in leading Pennsylvania forward.”

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