DREXEL HILL, Pa. — There’s no ideological civil war underway here. No, this is all personal — just former Navy Adm. Joe Sestak making his last stand against Democratic Party leaders who’ve been trying to sink him for six years and counting.

On paper, Sestak is about everything Democrats could want in a Senate candidate: a charismatic, decorated veteran elected to the House from a swing district who nearly defeated Republican Pat Toomey in 2010, one of the toughest election years for Democrats in decades.


But the independent streak that attracts voters is precisely what worries national Democrats so much about Sestak: They believe, for the second time since 2010, that he could blow a winnable Senate race because of his tendency to reject the slightest hint of marching orders from party bosses. Sestak is the first to admit he likes doing things his way, and party leaders quickly tired of constantly being told, in so many words, to take a hike.

In response, the whole D.C. Democratic gang is all-in for Sestak’s main Democratic rival, Katie McGinty — from Barack Obama and Joe Biden to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.). More than that, the national party is dropping more than $1 million to push McGinty past Sestak — a rare move by Democrats in a Senate primary that reflects their level of disdain for him.

Indeed, the infighting here threatens to do significant harm to Democrats’ hopes in the general election in Pennsylvania, a state that’s essentially a must-win for the party’s hopes of wresting the Senate from Republicans.

“It’s a disgrace,” fumes David Landau, chairman of the Delaware County Democratic Party, which is hosting Sestak on this warm April night. “It’s personal. They don’t like him. Joe’s quirky sometimes. He’s independent. He’s not going to always do what the leadership tells him to do.”

A few minutes later, Sestak bursts into the county Democratic dinner with a junior aide in tow, an hour after the speaking program has begun. He shakes hands, kisses female attendees and dashes through an extemporaneous speech before leaving the stage to applause. At one point, attendees chant, “Joe, Joe, Joe, Joe.”

Sestak brims with energy, speaking in his old stomping grounds that he represented for four years in Congress. And local party officials aren’t afraid to offer him an enthusiastic endorsement. It’s Sestak’s last event of the day, and he’s a busy guy; he offers 10 minutes for a Q&A.





But when the topic comes around to his strained relations with party honchos, Sestak can’t help himself. He ends up talking for about 90 minutes, explaining how things got so bad with Washington and why he’s on the right side of a restless electorate. He’s trudged hundreds of miles across this massive state in a walking tour that the national party basically saw as a waste of time. But he says that’s why D.C. Democrats don’t understand his appeal.

“We’ll win because of our approach to people. Look: That 422-mile walk which the DSCC felt was wrong? And this book which I published? They said you shouldn’t do something like that,” Sestak said, slipping into one of dozens of military metaphors he’ll use during the interview. “How do you govern by captaining the ship? How do you win without the trust of the crew? For me, I have to do it this way.”

Sestak, 64, won’t name names, but he describes an effort to squeeze him out that started more than a year ago. According to several people familiar with the events, the DSCC — chaired by Sen. Jon Tester of Montana and steered by Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York — began moving away from Sestak early in 2015 after he resisted hiring a party-approved campaign manager. Democrats tried to recruit a half-dozen candidates to run for the seat, eventually settling on McGinty, a longtime political operative and former chief of staff to Gov. Tom Wolf with a background in the clean energy sector.

The intervention on her behalf is the kind of activity from Washington that makes a tea party activist’s head explode: The DSCC is now running $425,000 worth of ads in Pennsylvania on McGinty’s behalf, money that could be used in the general election. It plans to spend an additional $1.1 million next week.

Sestak says it’s just the natural evolution of the party’s unsuccessful attempts to tighten its grip over him. The former two-term congressman left his seat in 2010 to run for Senate, defeated party-switching former Sen. Arlen Specter, then went on to lose a 51-49 squeaker in the general election.

Democrats see Sestak as a viable candidate, but only if someone from outside his circle is running his campaign. In 2015, Sestak bristled at Washington leaders’ efforts to control everything up to and including the interview process for campaign manager.

A high-ranking Democratic senator whom Sestak refuses to name allegedly asserted to him: “Sestak, whenever I tell you anything, the only answer will be, ‘yes.’”

These days, DSCC officials don’t even know who’s managing his campaign.

“If you lease a part of your soul in a campaign, Washington, D.C., and the establishment … will think they have an option to buy,” Sestak says. “For them, it’s so important to have 51 [votes]. But what they’ve lost sight of is: The people aren’t looking for D.C. control over what they think.”

It’s not even clear that Sestak would be a weaker general election opponent against Toomey. A top GOP strategist said that data show McGinty is less formidable, while Democratic operatives insist the opposite is true.

Toomey won’t say who he’d rather face, though he did contrast his unchallenged path to the GOP nomination with the Democratic food fight. It’s a role reversal for the parties — the past several election cycles it’s typically been Republicans beating each other up in nasty primaries.

“It didn’t occur to a single Republican to run against me,” Toomey said with some satisfaction.

Still, these days, national Democrats tend to keep their critiques of Sestak to themselves, knowing he could well end up their nominee. Reid has called Sestak “unproductive” and repeatedly predicted McGinty will win. But not this week.

“I’ve committed not to saying anything publicly,” Reid said in an interview, referring a reporter to Tester. “At least not to the press.”

Katie McGinty is the preferred candidate of the Democratic establishment. | AP Photo

When Tester is asked about the possibility of alienating Sestak, he replies: “I’m really just focused on the positive.”

People who know and like Sestak say it’s true that he won’t play team ball and that he’d be a headache not just in the general election, but also in the Senate. Sestak doesn’t deny his style turns some people off.

“When I was in the House, I didn’t usually let them know until the last day [how I was going to vote],” he said. “But then again, look at my voting record. Oh, my gosh! 100 percent voting record with AFL-CIO!”

“I don’t think people need to worry about how I stand,” he added.

The differences between the Sestak and McGinty campaigns are largely temperamental and stylistic. Sestak wakes at 5 a.m. daily and often makes his own schedule. He eats one meal a day when he gets home from the campaign trail.

“I’ve known the man for 10 years. I’ve never seen him eat,” quips Jean Davidson, a Delaware County Democrat.

Over a late lunch in D.C. in February near Capitol Hill, McGinty lingers over a cheese plate, remarking how impressed she is with the neighborhood’s transformation. With a thick Philly accent, she speaks in crisp sound bites that would make a Democratic consultant proud.

“In this race, I’m the candidate that is 100 percent focused on the squeeze to the middle class,” says McGinty, who begins her day at the crack of dawn firing off emails to staffers as she readies her three daughters for school.

McGinty’s campaign is chaired by an esteemed member of the Democratic establishment, former Gov. Ed Rendell, and managed by Mike Mikus, a veteran of several high-profile Pennsylvania campaigns. Sestak’s team is a group of younger operatives and is being run by Jake Sternberger, who is managing his first congressional race. Sestak’s brother ran his campaign in 2010.

But it’s easy to get the impression that Sestak himself is calling all the shots this time around.

In Delaware County, he’s constantly interrupted by well-wishers as he doles out his personal phone number, is thanked by former political candidates for his support and even bro hugs a campaign tracker from GOP firm America Rising. His political guard only goes up as the tracker begins filming, when Sestak threatens to end the interview.

“We’ll have to finish this over the phone,” he says. The tracker eventually leaves.

As Sestak speaks, he sometimes betrays why Democrats are so wary about his candidacy: He’s passionate but occasionally loses his train of thought. He is decidedly not “on message.” He makes constant references to his book, his job teaching ethical leadership at universities — and cites his own quotes as if everyone remembers them.

Polls suggest Sestak, despite the national forces arrayed against him, is at least an even shot to win the April 26 primary against McGinty and Braddock Mayor John Fetterman. If he’s the nominee, the DSCC and Senate leadership will need Sestak just as much as he needs them in November.

Sestak doesn’t seem worried that his relationship with the party might be beyond repair. He says they “may not have a marriage. But we’ll have a civil union.”

Party bosses are praying the primary will render a rapprochement unnecessary.

“Right out of the box, he started kinda like beating up the establishment, me included. People see that and they don’t appreciate it,” Rep. Bob Brady (D-Pa.), the longtime chair of Philadelphia’s Democratic Party, said at the Delaware County dinner.

By the time Sestak addressed the crowd later in the evening, Brady had already left.

