Pennsylvania Ping!
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Posted on 05/27/2022 10:50:38 AM PDT by lightman
Dr. Mehmet Oz has seen enough, and he isn’t waiting for a recount.
Sitting on a 910-vote lead in preliminary, unofficial tallies from Pennsylvania’s Republican Senate primary race as of Friday morning, Oz declared himself the presumptive winner in a new video release in which he took a definitive turn toward a general election campaign between two unorthodox candidates who rocketed to personal fame in wildly different ways.
That race to come, for a Senate seat currently held by Republican Pat Toomey, who did not seek re-election this year, is also one of a handful that will be pivotal in deciding the policy direction of a 50-50 Senate chamber for the last two years of President Joseph Biden’s term.
“I am blessed to have earned the presumptive Republican nomination for the United State Senate,” Oz tells his viewers in the new, one-minute video, before pivoting quickly to the next chapter of his campaign, which was a direct appeal to all Pennsylvania voters.
After decrying high energy costs, spiking gun violence in certain areas and now, an infant formula shortage, Oz said “I know we’ve got to heal. We’ve got to pull people together again. I want to make sure that happens. I will work with anybody who’s got good ideas and make the best solutions out of them.”
Oz’s closest primary opponent, former Wall Street hedge fund leader David McCormick, has said up to this point that he will want to see the primary election recount - triggered automatically by the closeness of Oz’s victory - through before conceding. The official winner won’t be certified until that is completed.
“This narrow difference triggers an automatic recount, and we look forward to a swift resolution so our party can unite to defeat socialist John Fetterman in the fall,” the McCormick campaign had said in a statement Tuesday night which a spokeswoman said they are still standing on as of Friday morning. The recount process will be completed by June 7, Pennsylvania Department of State officials have said.
As of Friday morning, State’s running vote count showed Oz polling 419,444 votes, or 31.21 percent, to McCormick’s 418,534, or 31.14 percent.
Officials said Wednesday there are still a couple thousand primary ballots left to be counted across all vote categories.
But it seemed highly unlikely that McCormick would win enough votes from the Republican voters left in that pool to pull into the lead heading into the recount. And, while the unofficial total is one of the closest ever in a statewide race, it’s worth noting no statewide recount in modern times has ever flipped the initial result.
For Oz, the declared win capped an unlikely journey that began in December, when noted cardiac surgeon-turned-daytime television personality and longtime New Jersey resident chose to plunk down $3.1 million late last year for land in tony Bryn Athyn, Montgomery County, plant his flag of residency in Pennsylvania and run for the U.S. Senate in a Republican primary field scrambled by the November 2021 withdrawal of Sean Parnell, the endorsed pick of former President Donald J. Trump.
Oz had to face down criticisms from most in the field that he was a “political tourist” who basically landed here for an exercise in self-aggrandizement; endure withering attacks - fueled by clips from his years in the public eye - that he couldn’t pass any variety of conservative purity tests; and, finally, overcome overt complaints from McCormick that his Turkish heritage left him somehow, not American enough to serve in the Senate.
He also had to worry about an unexpectedly strong challenge from the right mounted by one-time Republican congressional candidate Kathy Barnette that threatened to split the populist Republicans put off by McCormick’s Wall Street and GOP establishment lineage. Barnette, according to the latest figures, polled 24.7 percent of the vote.
After investing more than $12 million of his own money into the campaign, and capturing a new Trump endorsement in early April, Oz was able to scratch together just enough of a coalition of daytime television fans and Trump devotees to cross the finish line first in a crowded, seven-person primary field.
In a race where every bucket of votes counted - to this day, McCormick’s campaign is fighting to get a small handful of undated mail-in ballots added to the mix - Trump’s endorsement may have given Oz just the life he needed.
For example, in an unscientific sampling of voters at a precinct in Carroll Township, York County on Election Day that has voted heavily for Trump in his presidential races, most of those who said they had voted for Oz said their support for the TV doctor was either influenced or confirmed by Trump’s endorsement.
Some were like John Creavey, a 69-year-old retiree who noted that he was leaning toward McCormick because of his Army background, but “the Trump endorsement made me look twice.”
Others said they just needed to look once.
“He was picked by Trump. I’m a Trump (fan), and I love it,” said Jo Ann Vanno, a 76-year-old photographer.
The final winner of the GOP race will advance into what is expected to be a hotly-contested and nationally-watched general election campaign against Pennsylvania’s Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, who easily won the Democratic Party nomination for the seat being relinquished by incumbent U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey.
If it’s Oz, it will be probably the most celebrity-shaped statewide political race in Pennsylvania since former Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver Lynn Swann took on incumbent Gov. Ed Rendell in 2006, only one with potentially a lot more at stake for national politics given the Senate’s current 50-50 split between Republicans and Democrats.
Oz, 61, was born while his doctor father was in residency at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio. The family later moved to Delaware, where Mehmet Oz graduated from the Tower Hill School in Wilmington and won admission to Harvard, where he also made the roster for two years as a linebacker on the football team, though he is not listed as a letter winner.
Oz earned his medical and business degrees from the University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia. But he has practiced medicine and filmed his television show in Manhattan for decades, and his principal residence has long been in Bergen County in northern New Jersey.
While fantastically successful in medicine and media - vox.com has reported Oz holds 11 patents for inventing methods and devices involved in heart surgeries and transplants; his syndicated television show was a daytime ratings winner for 13 years; and, earlier this year, he unveiled an Oz star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame - Oz has drawn heavy fire from some in the medical community for promoting what his critics argue are “quack treatments and cures” on his show.
Fetterman has his own offbeat political origin story, having grown up in suburban and heavily-Republican York County and starting a career in the insurance industry before veering off that track to an AmeriCorps service job in Pittsburgh, preparing high school dropouts for GED testing, job pursuits and additional life skills.
That eventually led to Fetterman leading the startup of a similar, county-sponsored program in Braddock in 2001. It was there, in what he has said was an effort to make a point about dangerous levels of street crime, Fetterman was elected mayor in 2005.
But unlike most small-town mayors in Pennsylvania, who have oversight of the local police and can veto ordinances they really hate but otherwise are a little like the Prince Charles of their communities - holding a job little authority but a title that can become what you make of it - Fetterman grabbed the attention of journalists in search of America.
After profiles in magazines like Rolling Stone and The New York Times, a character was born. That profile was enough to get Fetterman elected to the office of Lieutenant Governor in 2018 - another Prince-Charles-like post.
Fetterman took it from there, using his statewide platform to push for legalization of marijuana, winning fans through a cutting-edge social media accounts and, this spring, showing the Democratic Party establishment how it’s done by stomping U.S. Rep. Conor Lamb in the Democratic U.S. Senate primary.
State officials defended the pace of the count of the votes following the May 17 primary election at a press conference Wednesday, with Acting Secretary Leigh Chapman contending that it largely is a function of the fact that current state law does not permit counties to start processing the mail-in ballots until the morning of election day.
Of the remaining 10,000 votes at that time, State officials said that about 4,000, were provisional ballots, which are reviewed on a case-by-case for validity. That category has broken evenly between McCormick and Oz thus far, making it very unlikely that either candidate will find a huge edge there.
So the McCormick camp was pinning its hopes on a few thousand remaining mail-in votes - including votes from overseas civilians and military personnel - as well as 860 additional signed but undated Republican mail-in ballots that the campaign is seeking court orders to get added to the count, in keeping with a federal court decision handed down Friday in an unrelated Lehigh County judicial race from 2021.
McCormick’s team reasons that any growth in the mail-in ballot count could be helpful in its quest to catch up to Oz since, through Monday night, McCormick was leading oz in that category of votes, by 32.1 percent to 23.1 percent. At that rate, McCormick hypothetically stands to gain about 90 votes per every 1,000 added to the count.
But as those tallies have continued to come in over the last two days, Oz’s lead has held at about 900 votes.
The d@mn recount is going to cost the taxpayers at least one million, according to the PA Secretary of State.
Pennsylvania Ping!
Please ping me with articles of interest.
FReepmail me to be added to the list.
Not an OZ fan, he looks like another Romney.
but between him and the GOP(e) establishment McCormick, at least Trump supports OZ
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I think we should just nuke PA. from space......you know...only way to be sure.
I’m not comfortable with a muslim in a political office at any level.
In a couple years, Romney may be on the conservative wing of the GOP Senate, without changing at all.
You sound like a Democrat.
Hopefully Trump will keep the pressure on OZ not to turn into a Romney.
Hard to change a tiger’s stripes, as they say!
Democrats aren’t fiscal conservatives.
Since PA enacted the mandatory recount (Act 67) there have been three statewide races that were tallied. EVERY time the results remained unchanged.
Seeme to me that a recount would be wizzing away a million bucks—into the wind.
I don’t think I could vote for him, glad I’m not in PA.
I had a hard enough time voting for a Moron, had to do two shots before voting in 2012 and showered immediately after.
A decisive win for Trump, since Oz would have surely lost without his endorsement..
Ridiculous that there are even ballots left to count since Election Day. Asinine beyond description.
Lou Barletta should have run for that Senate seat instead of for Governor. He would have been the best choice out of them All and with less controversy vs the others.
I’ve noticed a number of comments on this site, among presumably strong conservatives, as this is a conservative site, saying they can’t support certain GOP nominees for various offices, because they are too liberal for them.
And some go on to say they will vote for the Democrat instead.
Some of these people don’t think through the consequences of their votes. For example, electing the Democrat in PA could well enable the Democrats to keep control of the Senate.
Do these conservatives who bitch about the GOP nominee being too liberal, really prefer Chuck Schumer to be in charge of the Senate? Their vote could help enable that.
Congratulations Senator Fetterman.
Yet another RINO.
“ Hopefully Trump will keep the pressure on OZ not to turn into a Romney.”
There is zero chance this phony is getting elected to the US Senate. Zero.
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