To a degree that surpasses any other competition in the interim mandates in 2022 so far, Donald Trump has invested his personal prestige in the primary race in the Republican Senate in Pennsylvania, which is going through a final spasm of uncertainty, as Katie Barnett, a rebel candidate with scanty cars. gives fear at the last minute for Trump’s chosen, Dr. Mehmet Oz.
The result of this election, as well as the Republican race for governor, threatens to destroy the Republican Party – with a radius of explosion that could be felt in states near Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina in the coming weeks and months.
The turbulence also has serious consequences for Trump’s behavior on the party, which is becoming increasingly worried that the former president’s participation in the primary may reduce the chances of Republicans regaining the Senate despite President Biden’s unpopularity.
Trump backed Oz, a prominent physician, on the advice of many Republicans in and outside Pennsylvania. The bill is forthcoming, Republicans say.
Many of Trump’s own voters have expressed skepticism about Oz, who defended millions of dollars in negative publicity, highlighting his past Republican heterodoxies on various issues such as abortion and gun rights. As of Monday, Oz is leading by almost three percentage points in the average of RealClearPolitics polls in the primary, roughly coinciding with the latest daily poll to track the Oz campaign, I was told.
It is unclear how late Republicans will eventually vote, although a new poll from the University of Susquehanna found that 45 percent of respondents who decided “in the last few days” support Barnett.
Late approval
On Saturday, Trump finally backed Doug Mastriano, a retired conspiracy theorist who conducts opinion polls in the gubernatorial race in an apparent attempt to hedge his bets.
“He’s clearly upset that he’s not going his way,” said David Urban, a politically operational and early supporter of Trump who is leading the former president’s efforts to win Pennsylvania in the 2016 election.
Urban supports West Point’s Dave McCormick in the Senate race and said he had not spoken to Trump recently about the primary.
McCormick’s camp hopes the fireworks between Barnett and Oz will win him a second glance from voters who seem to waver between the three leading contenders.
Not everyone buys it.
A veteran Republican operative in Pennsylvania who is not involved in any Senate campaigns likened McCormick to Hans Gruber, the villain in “Die Hard,” who tries to shoot up Bruce Willis’s character even when he falls from the top. Nakatomi Plaza.
Barnett supported Mastriano and vice versa, and they both held events together – almost as if they were moving together like a kind of ticket to the super-MAGA. In recent days, she has opposed questions about her origins, including her military service and past Islamophobic comments.
Cathy Barnett speaks at a rally for Doug Mastriano, left. Credit … Michael M. Santiago / Getty Images
Oz, who, if elected, will become America’s first Muslim senator, called the comments “disqualifying” and “condemning” in an interview with the Associated Press on Saturday.
In the gubernatorial race, Republicans joining the party organization are desperately trying to stop Mastriano from winning the nomination and have called on other candidates to unite around former MP Lou Barletta, who is running for governor with the help of several former campaign aides. Trump.
One of the first members of Congress to embrace Trump, former Pennsylvania spokesman Tom Marino, criticized the former president at a news conference this weekend for his lack of “loyalty” to Barletta.
In a follow-up interview, Marino said he had no plans to support anyone in the race, but decided to support Barletta because he believed Barletta had won Trump’s support by risking his career to throw his share with Trump at the start of the 2016 campaign. .
“I did what I did because I was so outraged” because of Trump’s approval of Mastriano, Marino said. “Loyalty is important to me.”
The wider implications for 2022
Watching the events in Pennsylvania, which included the leading candidate in the Democratic Senate race, Lieutenant-Governor John Feterman, who suffered a stroke on Friday, observers from both parties used words such as “defeated” and “stunned”.
“It’s just crazy here,” said Christopher Nicholas, a Harrisburg-based Republican consultant.
The accusations revolve around why the Republican Party of Pennsylvania failed to assess the rise of Barnett and Mastriano until it was too late to stop their momentum. The ballots have already been printed, fueling the despair among party insiders that efforts to unite the party against one or both external candidates may ultimately prove futile.
“The press has paid very little attention to Barnett until the last two weeks,” he said. Terry Madonna, a Pennsylvania policy expert who has led research at Franklin and Marshall College for many years.
The National Democrats are closely following the events in Pennsylvania, and many predict that the results of Tuesday’s race will affect the other Republican primary elections for the Senate in the coming weeks.
And while public anger at inflation and supply disruptions weighs in on the Republican Party, Democrats hope to compete in the fall with candidates they see as easier to win, such as Barnett.
The biggest impact of Trump’s intervention could be felt in Arizona, where he has not yet issued approval. Trump has criticized the establishment candidate, Attorney General Mark Bernovich, for failing to undo Biden’s victory there in 2020, but has yet to choose an alternative.
David Bergstein, director of communications for the Democratic Senate’s election committee, said Trump’s interference in the Republican primary has an even greater effect on the Republican than many Democrats expected. “Chaos creates chaos,” he said.
What to read
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Nicholas Confessor and Karen Jurish explain the origins of the “replacement theory”, a former ideology that was supported by suspects in the Buffalo massacre on Saturday.
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Democrats are mocking campaign finance laws by using “little red boxes”, Shane Goldmacher said. And everything happens by eye.
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In North Carolina, Representative Ted Bud is proving the political power of pairing support from Donald Trump and the Growth Club, with Jasmine Uloa and Michael Bender.
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Jasmine has just returned from the mountainous west of North Carolina, where she found strong opinions about Madison Cothorne, the troubled first-term congressman facing a major challenge.
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In Idaho, feud between the governor and his vice governor has colored the Republican Party as the far right seeks to take over the state. Mike Baker was there.
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how to run
Former North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory is lagging behind in opinion polls as he seeks Republican nominations for his state’s Senate. Credit … Travis Long / The News & Observer, through the Associated Press
New day for Pat McCrory
When North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory signed legislation that critics called a “bathroom bill” in 2016, it sparked a firestorm.
The law, which required transgender people to use public toilets that match their gender, sparked protests from major businesses and sports centers, including the NBA and NCAA, which withdrew the All-Star Game and March Madness basketball tournament from the state.
A few months later, McCrory lost his re-election.
Scroll forward six years, and Republicans are pushing anti-transgender laws across the country and punishing companies that dare to object. But McCrory, who is running for the North Carolina Senate, is confused in his attempt to return to electoral politics, lagging far behind in the polls of a rival backed by Donald Trump.
McCrory also did not speak in the wake of the campaign about the burning issue of LGBTQ rights, which brought him to national prominence in 2016.
“This is not a problem that has driven me, it has never been,” McCrory said in a telephone interview Monday. “But that’s a problem. If they ask me, I’ll tell you where I am.”
McCrory’s attempt to replace Sen. Richard Burr, who is stepping down, has been hampered by the strength of Representative Ted Bud, who has the support of both Trump and the Conservative Growth Club and appears to be leading the way.
McCrory supports Florida’s recently passed law, which restricts the discussion of sexual orientation in schools. He said he had been told before that Ron DeSantis was Ron DeSantis.
But as he seeks a Senate nomination in Tuesday’s primary, he is more interested in talking about inflation. He describes himself as a Ronald Reagan Republican who is interested in national defense, fighting crime, cutting taxes and balancing budgets.
He also described himself as Jason Bourne of the Republican Party. “I have these outside groups with special interests who are trying to give me a false identity,” he said, addressing a particular problem with the Growth Club’s attacks. “Who the hell are they to determine what type of conservative I am?”
Carter Rehn, a longtime Republican strategist in North Carolina, said the Growth Club’s spending could be the biggest factor in the Senate race, and he agreed with McCrory that the main problem for voters was inflation.
Rehn said he did not think transgender rights were a major issue in the primary because it was likely that the leading candidates agreed with McCrory’s actions in 2016.
“Obviously none of his opponents are attacking him for that in the primary,” Wren said, “because if you attack Pat for what he has done in the past, he will probably …
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