Another salvo sounds in Pennsylvania’s U.S. Senate race

With just weeks to go until Election Day, negative rhetoric seems to be heating up on virtually all levels on Pennsylvania’s ballot.

Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Katie McGinty Wednesday ramped up attacks on Republican incumbent Pat Toomey.

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are both at record-breaking levels of unpopularity, and down-ticket candidates in the commonwealth have turned to criticizing their opponents by simply comparing them to their party’s presidential nominees.

That’s what McGinty’s been doing for months now in one of the most hotly contested — and expensive — Senate races in the country.

As Trump contends with a slew of defections from top Republicans, she is saying that Toomey hasn’t been clear enough on where he stands.

“This is not, ‘Who do you want to have for dog catcher.’ This is president of the United States of America,” she said. “I think a United States senator should have an opinion on that and should be clear with voters.”

Toomey hasn’t endorsed Trump, but hasn’t officially denounced him, either.

McGinty’s newest attack is to accuse Toomey of aggressively trying to foreclose on homes while working at a bank he co-founded.

Toomey co-founded the bank in 2005, and it did engage in the aggressive foreclosures McGinty mentions. The practice is legal in Pennsylvania, though, and appears to be no evidence Toomey himself was involved.

His campaign called McGinty’s charges “phony” and “desperate.”