President Joe Biden came to Pennsylvania on Thursday to campaign for Democrats. But Republican Guy Ciarrocchi wants to talk about what’s coming to the Philly suburbs: Crime.
“It’s not about what’s happening in New York,” said Ciarrocchi, the GOP candidate in the Sixth Congressional District. “It’s very real in our district. Violent crime has come to the suburbs.”
While the president was in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia to boost embattled U.S. Senate candidate John Fetterman, Ciarrocchi joined fellow Republican nominees Rep. Dan Meuser (PA-9) and Jeremy Shaffer (PA-17) at a press briefing to call out the Democrats’ record.
The Biden administration has “managed to harm every sector of the economy,” said Ciarrocchi. “From families who’ve managed to save for the future, whether was for a daughter’s wedding or their retirement, they’ve seen up to a third of that savings wiped away as the stock market has fallen. Young families who were saving for their first homes are now looking at mortgage rates…escalating.”
Ciarrocchi said his home is heated with natural gas, and the price is going up 81 percent. People using heating oil are seeing a 300 percent increase.
“These folks want answers,” said Ciarrocchi. “They want to know how they’re going to pay their bills this winter.”
Meuser said the GOP’s message in the final weeks of the campaign centers on high inflation, now at 11 percent in Pennsylvania. “We’ve got consumer demand way up and supply way down,” he said. “I promise we’re not going to raise taxes on American businesses.”
On energy, Meuser said Biden repeated the GOP complaint about his refusal to issue permits for drilling. According to The Wall Street Journal, Biden has slashed the number of acres leased for energy exploration at this point in a presidency by 97 percent.
“So, you have people hurting here in Pennsylvania, and you have President Biden eating an ice cream cone,” said Meuser, “telling us the economy is ‘strong as hell.’”
The Delaware Valley Journal asked Ciarrocchi what he would do to bring down inflation.
“It begins with American energy,” he said. “The president announced to the world we’re going to try and get out of the fossil fuel business and then canceled a series of projects, most notably the Keystone XL pipeline. And then, as we learned today, there are up to 4,000 permits being slow rolled by the federal government.
“So, what the president needs to do, what Congress under Republicans will force him to do, is to announce we’re back in the fossil fuel business. Americans will not be dependent on Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and Russia,” Ciarrocchi said.
Shaffer, an entrepreneur and software engineer is a political newcomer, as is his Democratic opponent Chris Deluzio in their western Pennsylvania race. Shaffer hit high energy costs as well, and all three Republicans called out Democratic reluctance to develop the Keystone State’s energy resources.
“Right beneath our feet in western Pennsylvania and so much of Pennsylvania, we have the solution,” said Meuser. “We sit on the Saudi Arabia of natural gas, one of the world’s largest energy reserves.”
But, he noted, Biden did not talk about that when he came to Pittsburgh. Instead, the president begged Saudi Arabia for more oil and is draining “our strategic petroleum reserves in a reckless way,” said Shaffer.
Asked about the Democrats’ emphasis on abortion rights, Ciarrocchi argued they are missing the mark.
“It’s not only the president, it’s a cookie-cutter campaign that most of them are using in open seats and races like mine with a challenger,” said Ciarrocchi. “I think the more they do it. They just appear to be out of touch. And it’s obvious that they’re using a political wedge issue.”
