Collins will headline a $1,000-a-plate luncheon for Toomey's Pennsylvania Senate campaign Aug. 2 at the Union League.
"Pat Toomey gets the fact that he needs to work with a lot of folks, that there doesn't need to be unanimity on all issues in the party," said Washington lobbyist David Urban, an influential GOP moderate and a host of the event.
Urban was Sen. Arlen Specter's chief of staff from 1997 to 2002, when the outgoing Pennsylvania senator was still a Republican. He stayed loyal when Specter became a Democrat last year, and he returned to the GOP fold after Specter lost the May 18 primary to Rep. Joe Sestak.
Urban is helping to connect Toomey with moderate Republicans in the capital and from the Specter camp. He calls Toomey "more of a fiscal conservative than a social conservative."
During the Senate campaign, Toomey has stressed the need to reduce the federal budget deficit, end bailouts for large banks and automakers, and check what he sees as unhealthy growth of government power over the economy in the policies of the Obama administration, such as the health-care overhaul.
Toomey, 49, who represented the Lehigh Valley in the U.S. House from 1999 to 2005, has rarely this year mentioned the divisive social issues, such as gay rights and abortion, that have come to be associated with the conservative wing of the GOP. In fact, Toomey earned high marks from antiabortion organizations for his congressional voting record; he also supported a proposed constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage.
Democrats deride him as an extremist, noting he had a more conservative voting record than former Sen. Rick Santorum (R., Pa.) by some measures, but Toomey has tried to show that he is no ideological fire-breather.
