<mediadc-video-embed data-state="{"cms.site.owner":{"_ref":"00000161-3486-d333-a9e9-76c6fbf30000","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b93390000"},"cms.content.publishDate":1652847624077,"cms.content.publishUser":{"_ref":"00000162-07b6-de22-a173-2ffe05de0001","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b933a0007"},"cms.content.updateDate":1652847624077,"cms.content.updateUser":{"_ref":"00000162-07b6-de22-a173-2ffe05de0001","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b933a0007"},"rawHtml":"
var _bp = _bp||[]; _bp.push({ "div": "Brid_52822072", "obj": {"id":"27789","width":"16","height":"9","video":"1014541"} }); ","_id":"00000180-d565-d1ad-afa4-fdf51de60000","_type":"2f5a8339-a89a-3738-9cd2-3ddf0c8da574"}”>Video EmbedPITTSBURGH — Pennsylvania Republican primary voters came home to their natural roots Tuesday evening after briefly flirting with insurgent candidate Kathy Barnette.
The race’s final result was too close to call. Businessman Dave McCormick and celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz were just a few hundred votes apart as of midnight, with thousands of ballots outstanding. Still, many Republicans across the country breathed a sigh of relief that one of the two electable nominees will face Democratic Lt. Gov. John Fetterman in the fall general election.
This race’s outcome won’t be determined immediately — in Pennsylvania, a recount is triggered automatically if the gap between the two candidates is under 0.5% of the vote, and there were reported problems with misprinted ballots that might have to be counted by hand.
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Still, the biggest story of the night remained that Barnette’s star fell just as quickly as it rose.
It was a race for the ages. Oz and McCormick traded attacks and negative ads for months. They also traded the lead back and forth several times, with former President Donald Trump disrupting the race with his endorsement of Oz and his scorched-earth attack upon McCormick at a poorly attended rally in Westmoreland County.
The Oz team made a video clip of Trump’s rant and ran it as an ad. The drama became too much for voters, who took a favorable look at Barnette. She soared ahead in the polls in the middle of last week, but then she fell off just as fast by Election Day.
Early in the evening, McCormick and his wife Dina joined supporters waiting at the bar at the election night party at the Hotel Indigo in Pittsburgh’s East Liberty neighborhood. He was shaking hands, hugging a tearful father-in-law, and chatting with supporters, who came hoping he had pulled it off.
Oz held his election night event at the other end of the state, in suburban Philadelphia.
In the governor’s race, Republicans chose from a crowded field of candidates a two-term state senator and retired Army colonel, Doug Mastriano. He is a candidate outside the center-right of the party. Mastriano aggressively tried to overturn the 2020 election result in Pennsylvania — one reason he received Trump’s endorsement. Mastriano will face current Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, who ran unopposed in the Democratic primary.
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Trump’s calculated move to endorse Mastriano days before the election, a decision that was about him getting at least one victory from an election in which none were guaranteed, gave him exactly what he wanted. However, Mastriano was already going to win the party nomination for governor easily, having held the lead in the race for several months.
