Pat Toomey Biography

Pat Toomey was born Patrick Joseph Toomey Jr., on November 17, 1961, in Providence, the capital of Rhode Island, US, to Mary Ann (née Andrews) and Patrick Joseph Toomey. He was the third-born of the six children of his Catholic family.

His father, a union worker, laid cable for the Narragansett Electric Company, while his mother worked a part-time job at St. Martha's Catholic Church. He is of Irish descent from his father’s side and of Portuguese origin from his mother’s side.

Toomey initially studied at the La Salle Academy on a scholarship and graduated as a valedictorian in high school. He was part of the Boy Scouts of America in his youth and was named an Eagle Scout. In 1984, he graduated from Harvard College with an AB degree in political science.

Following his graduation, Pat Toomey worked for Chemical Bank, where he handled currency swap transactions. In 1986, he joined the British-based merchant bank Morgan, Grenfell & Co., where he worked in foreign currencies, currency-related derivatives, and interest rates.

With the acquisition of Morgan, Grenfell & Co., in 1990, Toomey resigned shortly after and launched his own restaurant in Allentown, Pennsylvania, along with his brothers Steven and Michael.

In 1994, Toomey stepped into politics and was elected to Allentown's Government Study Commission. During his tenure, he introduced a split-roll tax system that levied higher taxes on land compared to buildings.

In 1998, he ran for the US House of Representatives. He assumed office as a Representative of Pennsylvania's 15th district on January 3, 1999.

In 2004, he quit the House voluntarily, as he had promised to serve only three terms during his campaign. The same year, he attempted to defeat Senator Arlen Specter in the Republican primary, but did not succeed.

In 2010, Toomey challenged Specter again. While Specter initially trailed in the polls, he later joined the Democratic Party.

*Specter was eventually beaten in the Democratic Party primary. Toomey ended up facing his rival Joe Sestak in the general election and won by a thin margin. He thus took over as the United States Senator from Pennsylvania on January 3, 2011.

During his tenure in Congress, Toomey was known as a moderate to conservative Republican and usually did not vote with the party leadership. As a senator, he was focused on economic and financial issues, particularly the issue of deregulation of various economic sectors.

In 2011, he launched a proposal for a balance of budget in 10 years. The bill received marked support but was not enacted.

Toomey co-sponsored a bill that assigned regulatory control over fracking to the states and not to the federal government. Drifting away from his party’s principles, Toomey, in 2013, supported thorough background checks on the sales of guns, in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.

Pat Toomey ran for re-election to the Senate as a Representative of Pennsylvania. He won the Senate seat in the general election on November 8, 2016.

During the 2016 election, Toomey decided to keep his Senate run separate from the Republican presidential election campaign. He did not support the presidential campaign of Donald Trump. However, on the election day, he stated that he had voted for him.

On October 5, 2020, he declared he would not seek re-election in the 2022 elections. He also stated that he wished to return to the private sector and that he would not consider running for governor

He left the Senate in January 2023, at the end of his term. He also worked as a Ranking Member of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee from January 2021 to January 2023.

During his time at the Senate, Pat Toomey had been a strong supporter of increased public expenditure on charter schools. He rejects the scientific consensus on climate change. Though he agrees that climate change is a reality, he has expressed his doubts over its extent and causes.

He was one of the 18 senators who voted against the bill to reopen the government during the US government shutdown of 2013. He supports banking deregulation.

He has been against same-sex marriage. He also supported the repeal of the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy, which banned openly LGBT people from working in the military.

He has been against the passage of the Medicare Prescription Drug Act and has opposed the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). He is also against abortion rights.

He has also had an anti-immigrant stance. In 2017, he supported Trump's executive order that imposed a ban on the entry of citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries to the US.

He co-sponsored the Israel Anti-Boycott Act in November 2017. In January 2018, he and 35 other Republican senators signed a letter to Trump requesting the preservation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) by modifying it for the 21st century economy. In 2021, he was one of the seven Republican senators who convicted Donald Trump of incitement of insurrection during his second impeachment trial.

Pat Toomey married Kris Ann Duncan in November 1997. The couple has three children: Patrick, Duncan, and Bridget.

Kris is a math and statistics graduate from the University of Connecticut and was a talented diver in her university days. She has previously worked for PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Kris and Toomey apparently met through Toomey’s sister, who was a childhood friend of Kris. Kris has also been a consultant to Toomey during his Senate days and has been associated with various charities too.

Toomey and his family now live in Zionsville, Pennsylvania. After quitting the Senate in 2023, Toomey became part of the board of the private equity firm Apollo Global Management.