A Republican woman with deep pockets and three years of service in the Trump administration on her resume is poised to jump into the 2022 Pennsylvania Senate race.
Businesswoman Carla Sands was appointed as the U.S. ambassador to Denmark by former President Donald Trump. Her late husband, California real estate magnate Fred Sands, was a major Republican donor. Now, Sands, 60, is hoping to turn that personal and family pedigree into a winning Senate campaign for the seat being vacated by retiring Republican Sen. Pat Toomey.
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Money certainly would not be a problem; Sands is wealthy enough to finance her campaign. But her absence from Pennsylvania until moving back to the Harrisburg area this year could be. The Camp Hill native, who graduated from two Pennsylvania universities and practiced chiropractic medicine in the state, lived for several years in Los Angeles, where her husband’s real estate firm was based, before going to Copenhagen.
A Republican operative in Pittsburgh who is encouraging Sands to run thinks that her Pennsylvania roots run too deep to be derailed by charges that she is a carpetbagger. “I think it will be hard to make that case,” Carl Fogliani said Thursday. Sands is now making the rounds in Pennsylvania, looking to build grassroots support before pulling the trigger on her campaign.
Sands’s supporters believe that she offers qualities other Republicans eyeing the Pennsylvania Senate race do not have: appeal in the traditional and Trump wings of the party, appeal in rural and suburban communities, and appeal in the central, eastern, and western regions of the commonwealth. “She covers all bases, geographically and ideologically, for the party,” Fogliani said.
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Sands would become the second female former ambassador appointed by Trump to mount a 2022 Senate campaign. Lynda Blanchard, 61, the former top U.S. diplomat in Slovenia, is running in Alabama. But as Blanchard discovered when the former president endorsed Rep. Mo Brooks, loyal service in the Trump administration is no guarantee of winning his backing in a Senate primary.
In that regard, Sands might have to overcome Republican Sean Parnell, who is expected to enter the Pennsylvania Senate race any day.
Last year, Parnell lost his bid for a Pittsburgh-area House seat, coming up short against Democratic Rep. Conor Lamb. That defeat is causing some GOP insiders in Pennsylvania to question his statewide viability. But Parnell has one crucial supporter in his corner that could make all the difference and signal that a Trump endorsement is in the offing: Donald Trump Jr. The 45th president’s eldest son has promised to endorse Parnell for whatever office he seeks in 2022.
Republicans already in the race include real estate developer and 2018 GOP nominee for lieutenant governor Jeff Bartos, Trump campaign activist and Army veteran Kathy Barnette (who is black), and attorney Sean Gale. Running for the Democrats are Lt. Gov. John Fetterman and Val Arkoosh, the chairwoman of the Montgomery County Commission.
