Metcalfe's Vitriol Launched Toward Massacre Survivors

PITTSBURGH, PA - Daryl Metcalfe’s constituents must not mind the sound of explosions. They keep re-electing the Pennsylvania lawmaker no matter how many verbal hand grenades he lobs.

Metcalfe, a Republican state representative from the Pittsburgh suburb of Cranberry Township, just tossed his latest. It traveled toward students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida who have demanded gun law overhauls since the fatal shooting of 17 people at the school.

In Facebook and Twitter posts, the conservative Metcalfe, 55, subtly aligned himself with conspiracy theorists suggesting several students who survived the slaughter were actors advancing the gun control cause. The entire post:

“I enlisted in the U.S. Army at 17 years old. This morning I was working out and listening to the news about ‘students’ being bused in to the Florida Capitol. The hypocrisy of the left struck me! They expect lawmakers to listen to the policy advice of 18 year old and younger ‘students’ who are advocating for gun control, but they do not believe 18 year olds who are old enough to serve on the battlefields of Afghanistan are old enough to purchase a rifle.”

The post wasn’t sensitive in any way to the survivors or the victims. But Metcalfe is not a sensitive man unless you dare touch him. Then he gets sensitive in a hurry.

In December, he made national headlines after Rep. Matt Bradford briefly touched his arm while addressing him during a House State Government Committee meeting.

"I'm a heterosexual," Metcalfe announced to an astonished Bradford. "I have a wife. I love my wife. I don't like men as you might so stop touching me all the time.”

That’s not what’s typically heard at state government committee meetings, but Metcalfe has a habit of making those sessions interesting. Case in point: In 2015, state Rep. Leslie Acosta of Philadelphia accused him of inviting white supremacist Robert Vandervoort to a hearing on a bill to make English Pennsylvania’s official language.

An outraged Metcalfe told Acosta that Vandervoort was no such thing. Metcalfe called him a “white nationalist.”

According to the definition of the Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization that tracks hate crimes, white nationalist groups “espouse white supremacist or white separatist ideologies, often focusing on the alleged inferiority of nonwhites.”

You can see why Metcalfe was offended. Acosta labeled Metcalfe’s invited guest a white supremacist when he actually was a white nationalist, which is someone who has white supremacist views. Big difference.

Metcalfe has been involved in many similar controversies since he first was elected to represent the 12th Legislative District in 1998. Have any of them hurt him? Not in the least.

He was re-elected with 67 percent of the vote in 2016, 61 percent in 2014 and didn’t have a Democratic opponent in 2012. I could go back further, but you’re bright; the pattern is evident.

Rather than be embarrassed by his corrosive comments and conduct, Metcalfe’s constituents embrace them wholeheartedly. There is obvious ideological alignment between the veteran lawmaker and the people he serves.

They don’t care how many grenades he lobs.

Even when the shrapnel is intended to strike survivors of a massacre.

Eric Heyl is Patch’s Pittsburgh field editor. Reach him at 412-334-4033 or Eric.Heyl@Patch.com

Metcalfe photo via Associated Press.