The Senate primary race in Pennsylvania has, up until recently, focused on only two candidates.
Dr. Mehmet Oz has gotten all the attention on the Republican side, thanks to his TV profile and his Trump endorsement. John Fetterman, the current lieutenant governor, has been largely leading the Democrats, despite his hard left positions and an incident in 2013 of pulling a gun on a black jogger that has not gotten a lot of coverage outside of local news and a few mainstream articles. If Fetterman becomes the Democrat nominee, I expect that will change.
However, Oz has apparently begun to lose ground in the polls – perhaps over the recent revelations that he was voting in the Turkish election in 2018. This story was brought into the public eye in large part by Mike Pompeo, who has endorsed a different candidate in the Senate primary, Dave McCormick. However, there is a third candidate who is rising in name recognition and the polls – and if she manages to become the GOP nominee, the Democrats would be absolutely panicked about having Fetterman as their nominee.
Meet Kathy Barnette, GOP candidate for the Pennsylvania Senate seat.
Barnette, her story, and her candidacy, have all been flying under the media radar as Oz and McCormick are fighting it out with their high-profile endorsements. However, as Oz’s star dims and McCormick fails to gain any ground, Barnette is getting attention – and with only eight days to go before the May 17th primary vote, she needs all the attention she can get.
https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1523512208415727617
According to the new Trafalgar Group poll, Trump endorsed Oz was at 24.5 percent, Barnette was at 23.2 percent and McCormick was at 21.6 percent in the race to be the nominee for the seat of retiring GOP Senator Pat Toomey.”
The survey was conducted between May 6 and May 8. The poll consisted of 1080 likely 2022 GOP primary voters, had a response rate of 1.44 percent and a margin of error of 2.99 percent.”
Pundits theorized that Barnette is surging due to her recent debate performance and Oz was falling due to his heavy negatives with Republican voters.”
Speaking of that debate…
Republican candidate Kathy Barnette receives an ovation after her closing statement. pic.twitter.com/kffNrocGhM
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) May 5, 2022
Imagine her on a stage with John Fetterman. What a tremendous contrast that would be – and one that the Democrats would actually be tearing their hair out over.
Barnette has a profile that echoes the new lieutenant governor of Virginia, Winsome Earle-Sears. Both are veterans (Earle-Sears served in the Marines, Barnette in the Army Reserves), both came from humble and non-political upbringings, and both are women of faith. If this is the type of candidate that the GOP attracts, then why isn’t everyone throwing in to endorse them?
Seriously, just listen to Barnette speak out in 2020.
I have always believed that we, as a nation, were better than the horrors we lived through during the summer of 2020.
I believed it then and I believe it now as we see this same mob descend on our conservative SCOTUS Justices.
Violence is never the way. https://t.co/FukLqhn7Bd
— Kathy Barnette (@Kathy4Truth) May 9, 2022
So, why did Trump endorse Oz, and Pompeo back McCormick? Because Trump felt a kinship with Oz over their reality TV backgrounds, and because Pompeo is backing his former classmate and friend. The Republicans constantly run into this problem, where personal ties and personal loyalties often get in the way of looking at a bigger picture of “what will make it harder for the other side to win this election”. The Democrats, as we all know well, are ruthless and self-serving when it comes to making the political calculations over personal loyalties. That’s how we ended up with Joe Biden as the nominee, and Kamala Harris (who Jill apparently still loathes) as his running mate. Why? Because the Democrats made the calculated decision that Bernie Sanders could win the nomination, but not the general election – so the Democrat establishment threw their support behind Biden. And once that happened, even Bernie got in line behind Biden.
The Republicans don’t have that kind of top-down party control – not at the national level, and not at the state level. If they did, it would have saved them a lot of headaches and races in the past with candidates who won primaries, but did not appeal to the general electorate. For the GOP, the primary race is almost more important than the general election. And in the Pennsylvania Senate primary, the Republican voters have a distinct choice. They can pick someone who makes voting for the Democrat neutral or easy, or they can pick someone who makes voting for the Democrat very hard. And believe me, having Kathy Barnette facing off against John Fetterman would make that choice very hard for Democrats.
These next eight days should prove to be very interesting.
Featured image: Kathy Barnette, from her campaign page, image released under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license and marked as free to download and use, cropped
SCOTTtheBADGER says: May God grant Ms. Barnett victory in her run for the Senate The whole nation, not just Pennsylvania need her there.
opus says: Agree, with Mr. Badger. Just became aware of Ms. Barnett recently and am extremely impressed, heck I live in Montana and am sending her money. The GOP poohbahs should be going all out to back her and the Lt. Guv in the future. Compare these two butt kicking ladies to the feckless, statist Karens that infest the Donkeys and anyone with a brain larger than a gnat can see the stark differences. It’s a no brainer, the fossils in DC need to wise up.
GWB says: She seems like an outstanding candidate. I hope she succeeds.
(And I think you left an ’em’ open at the end of your post. Comments are going all italicized. I started my comment with a closing ’em’ tag just to see.)
GWB says: Nope, didn’t work.
That’s because there is an open tag – then another open tag, and then a close tag. Some browsers ignore a second open tag inside an open/close, others don’t (and thereby get confused).
My best wishes also to Ms. Barnette – the Oz endorsement is proof that Trump can still make horrible mistakes. (The balance of good and bad is what is important in politics, however. There’s only been ONE being in human form ever that made no mistakes.)
Doug says: She’s got my endorsement from neighboring Maryland! My extremely liberal father, who backs Fetterman, is scared of her, that’s good enough for me!
Yeah-Me-Neither says: How can Kathy Barnette be a Republican? Isn’t she an oxymoron.
If I were in Pennsylvania, I’d vote for her, early and often. I agree with MLK. It doesn’t matter what the color of her skin is. What matters is the nature of her character, and her beliefs. The party that does not understand that is the un-Democratic party.
Hmmm. From now on, I refer to them as the UDP.
7 Comments