PITTSBURGH (TNS) — With less than a week before Election Day in Pennsylvania, a third candidate has stepped into the forefront with million-dollar spenders Mehmet Oz and Dave McCormick: political commentator Kathy Barnette.
Barnette, a Montgomery County resident, is surging in polls of GOP voters in the state. She’d been slowly climbing in recent months but shot to the top of the ranks in the last few weeks, appearing as a front-runner alongside Oz, a cardiothoracic surgeon and former TV host, and McCormick, the former CEO of the world’s largest hedge fund.
“It’s basically a dead heat,” said Sam DeMarco, the chairman of the Republican Committee of Allegheny County. DeMarco is supporting McCormick in the upcoming primary election.
Oz and McCormick have both spent tens of millions of dollars on TV ads sparring with one another. Barnette, however, has only spent a fraction — less than $2 million — of the money McCormick, Oz and their affiliated super PACs have spent.
Barnette got an additional boost this week after the anti-tax Club for Growth endorsed her on Wednesday and has begun airing TV ads on her behalf, as well as the endorsement of the anti-abortion Susan B. Anthony List’s decision on Tuesday to back her over Oz, who has the endorsement of former President Donald Trump.
Barnette’s surge was timed well with the recent Supreme Court draft opinion leak about the landmark Roe v. Wade case. During a debate last week at Grove City College, Barnette said her mother had conceived her after being raped at 11 years old. Telling their life stories growing up Black and poor in the South on a pig farm, has also gone viral on social media in recent days.
This story — and this surge — has cast her as an alternative for Pennsylvania Republicans turned off by the two millionaire frontrunners.
But because of her quick rise to the top of the polls, Pittsburgh Republicans questioned whether she’d been properly vetted by GOP voters. On her website, Barnette says she is a veteran, former adjunct professor of corporate finance and public speaker.
When a Washington Examiner reporter contacted Barnette’s campaign and asked for details about her past, such as the name of her hometown and where she taught college classes, her campaign said Barnette “keeps her early life as private as possible.”
Barnette’s campaign also did not respond to multiple requests for an interview from the Post-Gazette over the last two weeks.
Sean Parnell, the former Trump-endorsed candidate for this race who dropped out last year in the midst of a contentious child custody case, said it’s frustrating that Barnette has skirted questions. Parnell endorsed McCormick just after he announced his run.
“The answer to these [questions] can come either before the primary or after,” Parnell said. “I would rather they come before.”
And in the chance that any of her claims are false? “If you think Democrats aren’t going to weaponize this in a general election, you’re insane,” Parnell added.
But the growing focus on Barnette suggests anxiety among some conservative and pro-Trump circles that Oz doesn’t sufficiently reflect their views on abortion, guns or the culture wars the GOP is waging against Democrats.
In a Republican Trafalgar Group poll released earlier week, 23% of likely Republican voters said they would vote for Barnette, a 5 point increase from her April polling numbers.
Oz also jumped two points in the poll since last month, rising to 25%, while McCormick showed no change over last month at 22%. A Fox News poll showed similar voter interest, with Oz at 22%, McCormick capturing 20% and Barnette at 19%.
Brent Rambo, a Penn Hills Republican Committee chairman, said he’s been supporting Barnette for the past year, ever since he saw her speak at a breakfast in Murrysville last year.
“There’s a lot of people that have a lot of doubts about Dr. Oz and Mr. McCormick,” Mr. Rambo said. “They’ve been beating each other up on TV, and I think people are looking for an alternative, somebody that first of all lives here [ Pennsylvania] … and somebody that they feels like one of them.”
“Kathy is one of us, she’s not a millionaire,” Rambo added.
If elected, the 50-year-old would be the first Black woman Pennsylvania voters will have sent to the U.S. Senate.
But it’s McCormick’s success as a businessman and his time in the Bush administration that attracts DeMarco’s support.
“His experience in military, his experience in government, and his experience in business makes him extremely well-qualified to hit the ground running as our next U.S.senator,” DeMarco said. “The other two, forget about it. It’s on-the-job training. I don’t know if we can afford that in the perilous times we are living in today.”
Barnette came into the race with little name recognition or money but gained support among some right-wing groups by campaigning with allies of Trump’sunfounded conspiracy theories that Democrats stole the 2020 election in Pennsylvania. She was endorsed by state Sen. Doug Mastriano, the GOP gubernatorial frontrunner who was subpoenaed by U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Jan. 6 committee for his involvement in the Capitol insurrection attempt. He was recently criticized for attending an event promoted by conspiracy and QAnon believers.
In recent years, Barnette has become a speaker for anti-abortion causes, penned a memoir about being Black and conservative, ran unsuccessfully for a congressional seat in a Democratic-leaning district in suburban Philadelphia and gained a platform as a guest on conservative news shows.
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