Kearney Highlights Threads Linking Harrisburg, Washington

State Senator Tim Kearney. Photo: James Robinson

“The election has been disputed from day one,” says State Senator Tim Kearney (D-26). 

He’s not talking about the presidential election, but rather about an attempt by Pennsylvania State Senate Republicans not to seat Democrat Jim Brewster, who won the race to represent Pennsylvania’s 45th district by 69 votes. 

State Republicans claim that some mail-in votes should not have been counted because they were not properly dated. When the commonwealth’s secretary of state deemed the ballots legitimate, Republicans sued. Several courts, including the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, upheld the secretary of state’s decision. “The Supreme Court said that intent to vote was clear,” Kearney says. “There was no fraud, so they should be counted.”

Kearney sees what he calls the bad faith of Republicans in Harrisburg as directly connected to the denial by Donald Trump, and many Republican legislators, of Trump’s loss in the presidential election. “The refusal to seat Senator Brewster and the objections to President-elect Joe Biden’s victory are two examples of growing attempts to erode our democracy and the rule of law,” Kearney asserted in a statement. “As long as this outrage continues, a quarter-million Pennsylvanians are robbed of their representation in the Senate because Republicans don’t like the outcome of the election.”

In a later conversation, Kearney also noted that his colleague, Republican State Senator Doug Mastriano, “chartered buses and sold tickets to go to the rally” in Washington D.C. on January 6 and had his photograph taken in front of the Capitol during the beginning of the siege. “How is that senatorial behavior?” Kearney asked.

As for what to expect in Harrisburg this session, Kearny says Republicans will be revisiting Pennsylvania election law with a focus on limiting mail-in voting for future elections. “It’s hard not to see it as a power grab,” he said.