U.S. Rep. Conor Lamb, center, listens as state Rep. Eddie Day Pashinski, left, and Luzerne County Democratic Chair Kathy Bozinski welcome him to a campaign event at Bank + Vine in Wilkes-Barre on Sunday. Lamb is seeing the Democratic nomination to run for Pennsylvania’s open U.S. Senate seat in 2022 as incumbent Pat Toomey prepares to step down.
                                 Roger DuPuis | Times Leader

U.S. Rep. Conor Lamb, center, listens as state Rep. Eddie Day Pashinski, left, and Luzerne County Democratic Chair Kathy Bozinski welcome him to a campaign event at Bank + Vine in Wilkes-Barre on Sunday. Lamb is seeing the Democratic nomination to run for Pennsylvania’s open U.S. Senate seat in 2022 as incumbent Pat Toomey prepares to step down.

Roger DuPuis | Times Leader

Congressman from Pittsburgh area seeks Democratic nod as race to replace Toomey heats up

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<p>U.S. Rep. Conor Lamb speaks at Bank + Vine on Sunday as Wilkes-Barre City Councilmen Bill Barrett and John Marconi listen.</p>
                                 <p>Roger DuPuis | Times Leader</p>

U.S. Rep. Conor Lamb speaks at Bank + Vine on Sunday as Wilkes-Barre City Councilmen Bill Barrett and John Marconi listen.

Roger DuPuis | Times Leader

WILKES-BARRE — Two days after announcing a run for Pennsylvania’s open U.S. Senate seat, Rep. Conor Lamb brought his campaign to the Wyoming Valley on Sunday afternoon.

Lamb, 37, who represents a suburban Pittsburgh district, drew on the economic parallels between his blue collar hometown and the coal region during a meet-and-greet with local Democratic supporters at Bank + Vine in downtown Wilkes-Barre, fresh off a cross-commonwealth tour that included stops in Erie, Coudersport and Scranton.

“Political and economic democracy are inseparable,” Lamb, D-Mount Lebanon added, weaving those parallels into a speech aimed at working class voters, with an emphasis on labor rights, voting rights and a clear frustration with the Jan. 6 pro-Trump insurrection and its aftermath.

“It really was the votes of working people that brought about fair labor laws, safer workplaces, raised the minimum wage, established Social Security and Medicare, even ended Jim Crow laws and segregation and secured the right to vote for everyone. That was the result of working people voting,” Lamb said.

Who’s in?

Lamb, who launched his campaign Friday afternoon at a union hall in Pittsburgh, is among those seeking the nomination to replace outgoing GOP U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Lehigh Valley.

He is the second candidate in the increasingly crowded 2022 race to visit Luzerne County so far, as state Sen. Sharif Street, D-Philadelphia, visited Hazleton on Friday. Lieutenant Gov. John Fetterman, a fellow Western Pennsylvania Democrat, visited Luzerne County during his unsuccessful 2016 bid for the Democratic Senate nomination, but not yet this cycle.

Luzerne County Democratic Chair Kathy Bozinski stressed that the local party welcomes any and all Democratic candidates to bring their messages to Luzerne County.

According to The Associated Press, the Democratic field in addition to Lamb and Fetterman so far is as follows: Philadelphia state House Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta, who made history as the first openly gay Black man to be elected to the state General Assembly; anesthesiologist Val Arkoosh, a woman who chairs the board of commissioners in Montgomery County outside Philadelphia; John McGuigan, a software executive; Dr. Kevin Baumlin, the chair of emergency medicine at Pennsylvania Hospital; and Eric Orts, a climate change activist and professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.

The AP also reports that Lamb is second only to Fetterman so far in fundraising.

On the GOP, side, the AP tallies a list of aspirants including conservative commentator Kathy Barnette, running to become the first Black Republican woman in the Senate; Jeff Bartos, a real estate investor who was the party’s nominee for lieutenant governor in 2018; Carla Sands, Trump’s former ambassador to Denmark; and Sean Parnell, a friend of Donald Trump Jr. who launched a career as an author after writing a memoir of his tour of duty as an Army Ranger in Afghanistan.

Lamb won reelection to his House seat last year in a close race with Parnell.

Pennsylvania Republican Chair Lawrence Tabas reacted to Lamb’s entrance into the race by asserting Lamb — considered a Democratic moderate — has a “reckless track record of putting liberal interests over Pennsylvanians,” the AP reported.

‘We’re going to organize’

Bozinski and state Rep. Eddie Day Pashinski, D-Wilkes-Barre, introduced Lamb to a crowd that included local elected officials and Democratic candidates for Luzerne County Council, as well as voters who quizzed Lamb in English and Spanish — he replied in both languages — about issues including voting rights, the filibuster, infrastructure, Jan. 6 and continuing efforts by some Republicans to falsely argue that former President Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election.

“It’s not the easiest time in our history to step up and do public service,” said Lamb, who came to office three years ago by beating a Trump-backed Republican in a special election and now joins a crowded field of senatorial aspirants on both sides of the aisle.

“They’re still trying to overturn it,” Lamb said of GOP efforts to thwart President Joe Biden’s victory. “They excuse and remain silent about an attack on our Capitol, the first attack like that since the war of 1812. They’re making it harder for people to vote, especially for Black people, brown people, working people who have a hard time getting to the polls on Election Day.”

“The lesson for us is that we have to be more determined than they are. We’re not going to attack any capitols. We’re going to organize and register people (to vote),” he said.

Lamb, a U.S. Marines veteran and former federal prosecutor, reiterated his support for legislation to protect voting rights, and said the COVID-19 relief programs advanced by Biden and Democrats so far will give the party a strong record to run on in the 2022 midterms.

He also said he favors eliminating the Senate’s filibuster rule.

“For me, it was the Jan. 6 commission vote that did it for me, when they filibustered that in the Senate, that’s when I said we have to set this aside, at least for the purposes of basic democracy,” he said. “If the only option down there was keep it as it is or set it aside entirely, I say we set it aside entirely. We’re not getting stuff done anymore. We’re just handing them a cudgel to beat us with.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.