Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson will campaign for Republican Pennsylvania Senate candidate Tom Smith on Friday in Murrysville, Pennsylvania.
Smith has said he was inspired by Johnson, the Tea Party businessman who knocked off incumbent Russ Feingold, the progressive Democrat, in 2010.
On a recent appearance on the Laura Ingraham Show, Smith said he is a “business person by heart and I’ve never done something spontaneously.”
Smith said he looked at incumbent Sen. Bob Casey’s (D) record and knew he would be vulnerable in Pennsylvania because Casey voted for Obamacare and voted to raise the debt ceiling seven times.
“He’s not his father,” Smith said, referring to the Casey’s more conservative father.
Smith is a self-made business man who made his money in the coal industry. He mortgaged his home to go into the coal industry, and says he is a “citizen candidate” who has never run for statewide office but is doing so because he sees the opportunities that were available to him diminishing in this generation.
Smith said when asked why he would give up his comfortable life, he said it was because he cares about his country more.
“I am willing to give up something I love for something I love more — and that is this country and our kids’s future,” Smith said.