BRISTOL -- Wading deep into the final days of Pennsylvania's critical U.S. Senate race, President Obama rebuked Sen. Pat Toomey Saturday over a new ad featuring the president's previous praise of the Republican for sponsoring a bill to expand background checks on gun buyers.
"Pat Toomey may have done the right thing on one vote, but courage is telling Pennsylvania voters where you stand on the tough issues, not just the easy ones like background checks," Obama said in a statement released by Democrats' Senate campaign arm. "Pat Toomey won't tell Pennsylvania voters where he stands on Donald Trump, trying instead to have it both ways by telling different people what he thinks they want to hear. That's not courage."
Obama made clear he supports Toomey's Democratic challenger, Katie McGinty, in a tight race that could determine control of the Senate.
His statement came in response to a new Toomey television ad running in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh and highlighting the president's praise in 2013 after Toomey sponsored a background check bill. That measure, introduced in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook school massacre, has become central to Toomey's political survival as he seeks cross-over votes.
Earlier in the day, Toomey had defended using the president's words.
"President Obama stood up publicly and praised my work of reaching across the aisle and trying to get something done on an important issue, which is background checks, and you know of course the other side has tried to discredit and deny the work that I did," Toomey said after his morning event in West Chester. "I think President Obama said it well so we used his clip -- it's his quote."
The ad set off another fight over the senator's record on gun laws in the final days of a neck-and-neck campaign that has already been deluged with ads, making it the most expensive in history.
Toomey's support for the background check bill made him one of the few Republicans willing to back tougher gun laws of any kind and earned him endorsements from gun control groups backed by former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and former Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, gravely wounded in the Tucson shooting.
Both endorsements have been critical to his appeal to moderates.
Toomey has tried to maintain that appeal by refusing to say where he stands on Trump -- and continued that refusal Saturday. He would not say how he will vote when asked by reporters.
He has instead touted his political independence while painting McGinty as a "rubber stamp" for Democratic leaders and Hillary Clinton.
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