When the leading Republican nominees for the Pennsylvania Senate — Trump-endorsed celebrity surgeon Dr. Mehmet Oz and David McCormick, a former hedge fund executive – who shared a debate phase for the first time Monday night, received sharp attacks not only from each other, but also from three other candidates vying to wipe out their election lead.
With few substantive disagreements among the five candidates, the attacks instead focused on how long each had lived in Pennsylvania (for Dr. Oz and Mr. McCormick, not much, recently); previous commitments with other countries; and the statements of Dr. Oz during the early months of the coronavirus pandemic that encouraged people to wear masks — now a banned position among Republican believers.
dr. Oz rarely failed to remind viewers that he had received an endorsement from former President Donald J. Trump, a victory he used to declare himself the real “America First” candidate in the race. His rivals disputed the designation.
“The reason Mehmet keeps talking about getting President Trump’s approval is because he can’t pivot on his own positions and his own track record,” Mr McCormick said. “The problem, Doctor, is there’s no panacea for flip-flopping, and the people of Pennsylvania see through your fakery and that’s what you’re dealing with and that’s why you’re not rising in the polls.”
The latest public polls from the race, taken together, show that Dr. Oz and mr. McCormick nearly tied for the lead in the May 17 primary, a fact close to their hearts on Monday.
The three others on stage: Kathy Barnette, a political commentator who has written a book about being black and conservative; Jeff Bartos, a real estate developer; and Carla Sands, who was Mr. Trump’s ambassador to Denmark — tried to attack the frontrunners both individually and as a pair of carpet sacks trying to buy a Senate seat.
“The two foreigners, the two tourists who came here to run, they don’t know Main Street Pennsylvania,” Mr. Bartos said. “They didn’t want to spend time there until they decided to go for the office.”
Cleveland-born Dr. Oz, a son of Turkish immigrants who attended the University of Pennsylvania for business and medical schools and who has lived most of his adult life in New York and New Jersey, recently changed his voting address at his in-Laws’ home in the suburbs of Philadelphia.
Born and raised in western Pennsylvania, Mr. McCormick returned to the state from Connecticut, where he served as chief executive of Bridgewater Associates, a hedge fund.
The debate also reflected the efforts of the second-rate candidates to make a jingoist appeal, while calling Dr. Oz and mr. McCormick as loyals to other nations before the United States. Ms. Sands, who also went back to Pennsylvania for the Senate race, said neither could be trusted to put America first.
She said that Dr. Oz was “Turkey first”, adding: “He served in the Turkish military, not the US military, and he chose to do that. He chose to put Turkey first.” She said Mr McCormick “China comes first. He made his fortune in China, and he is China first.”
dr. Oz defended his stay in the Turkish military as being required to keep his Turkish citizenship, which he said he needed to visit his mother in the country. Mr. McCormick said his international business career would benefit Senate decision-making.
And Ms. Barnette reflected the other candidates’ attempts to appeal to Trump voters. She even included a rare — for Republican primary circles — critique of the former president.
“MAGA does not belong to President Trump,” she said, using the acronym for Mr. Trump’s campaign slogan, Make America Great Again. “Our values have never, ever shifted to President Trump’s values. It was President Trump who changed and joined our values.”
The debate showed how a commitment to Mr Trump is at the center of the Oz campaign. He cited the former president’s support in nearly all of his responses, and while Mr. McCormick dodged a question as to whether Republicans should “get out of 2020” and stop discussing Mr. Trump’s defeat, Dr. Oz that the party must lean on its false claims about the 2020 election.
“We can’t go any further,” said Dr. oz. “Draconic changes have been made to our voting laws by the Democratic leadership, and they have blocked appropriate reviews of some of those decisions. We have to be serious about what happened in 2020 and we can’t tackle that until we can really look under the hood.”
Monday’s debate was the first to feature the race’s two frontrunners, after Dr. Oz and mr. McCormick had skipped a televised debate in February. Both entered the race after previous Trump-backed candidate Sean Parnell, a former Army Ranger who received the Purple Heart for his service in Afghanistan, dropped out in November after losing a custody dispute with his estranged wife.
Both Dr. Oz as Mr. McCormick mostly self-funded their campaigns. According to the most recent campaign finance reports, $11 million of the $13.4 million Dr. Oz has been collecting, coming out of his own pocket. Mr. McCormick has given his campaign $7 million of the $11.3 million he has raised.
For months, the two campaigned fiercely, publicly and privately, to gain Mr. Trump to win. Mr Trump this month chose Dr. Oz, playing off his success as a television show host while also being wary of Mr McCormick’s previous business dealings in China.
Pennsylvania Democrats have their own contentious primary between John Fetterman, the lieutenant governor and the frontrunner; Representative Conor Lamb; and Malcolm Kenyatta, a state representative from Philadelphia.