PENNSYLVANIA – New reporting from the Washington Examiner highlights how nasty the fight between Connecticut hedge fund executive David McCormick and New Jersey daytime TV host Mehmet Oz has become, as both candidates find themselves in a competition of who can better suck up to Donald Trump.
Highlights below:
- Top Pennsylvania Senate contenders David McCormick and Mehmet Oz are casting aspersions on each other’s loyalty to Donald Trump in the struggle to win personal favor with the former president and secure his endorsement.
- The unfolding result has been an intensely personal competition for Trump’s seal of approval between McCormick and Oz, who are trading barbs and claiming the former president has fresh concerns about the other’s candidacy because of who they associate with or comments they uttered in the past.
- The Oz campaign is simultaneously highlighting McCormick’s public remarks from early last year, complimenting President Joe Biden’s inclusive “tone” and criticizing Trump’s “divisiveness.” Oz partisans also point out that McCormick in a recent radio interview initially sidestepped whether he would have voted to convict Trump at trial in the Senate on impeachment charges that he fomented the ransacking of the Capitol on Jan. 6 last year before finally saying “no.”
- The implication from both McCormick and Oz: My opponent is a faux Trump supporter. The line of attack makes strategic sense. The former president is often more swayed by perceptions of personal loyalty than whether a Republican candidate is sufficiently supportive of his “America first” agenda. That extends beyond the candidates and includes the strategists they surround themselves with.
- “Most of the attention has been on the millions of dollars spent on TV ads by Dr. Oz and hedge fund executive David McCormick and their supporting PACs,” said Jeffrey Brauer, a political science professor at Keystone College in northeastern Pennsylvania. “It seems to be a contest of who is more conservative and more aligned with former President Trump and his America First assertions. Both have the carpetbagger problem.”
- Meanwhile, Republican operatives and media figures with whom Trump speaks regularly are divided on the two leading candidates. That could complicate any move he makes in the Republican primary ahead of voting in mid-May, as the former president often seeks the counsel of others in his orbit before deciding on an endorsement.
Click here to reach the Washington Examiner’s full article.
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