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Brigid Bergin: Hey, all. It's Brigid Bergin in for Melissa Harris-Perry, good to have you with us. We're going to turn our sights to Pennsylvania and the race to fill the seat of retiring Republican Senator, Pat Toomey. The seat is a key battleground when it comes to control of the Senate. Today, we're going to focus on the crowded Republican field as it heats up ahead of the primaries in May. The campaign ads are hitting the airwaves, giving us a taste of the rhetoric to come throughout this mirtron cycle and beyond. The Republican candidates getting the most attention are David McCormick, once the head of the largest hedge fund in the world, and Mehmet Oz, otherwise known as television personality, Dr. Oz, and both have been spending big money on attack ads.
Speaker 2: David McCormick got, rich off us.
Speaker 3: Why is Mehmet Oz, a liberal RINO, Republican in name only?
Speaker 2: McCormick led a hedge fund with a billion-dollar Chinese investment program.
Speaker 3: Oz wanted to take away your gun rights.
Speaker 2: All to make a buck, McCormick even criticized President Trump's China policy
Speaker 3: Promoted Obamacare.
Speaker 2: No wonder Trump fired him.
Speaker 3: Never trust a RINO.
Brigid Bergin: Neither the Pennsylvania Republican Party nor former president Trump has endorsed a candidate in this race yet. Let's talk with Katie Meyer, political reporter for WHYY. Thanks for being here, Katie.
Katie Meyer: Thanks for having me.
Brigid Bergin: Katie, we mentioned McCormick and Dr. Oz, but the full Senate GOP field is bigger than that. Just briefly, can you tell us who the other candidates are?
Katie Meyer: Sure. There's a third candidate who has gotten some traction, and that's Jeff Bartos. He's a real estate developer from outside of Philadelphia. Then there are a bunch of other candidates that are in the mix. There's Carlos Anns, who has some connections to Trump, there is Kathy Barnett, who was, I would say, a freelance investigator of baseless election fraud claims.
The race really has boiled down to Bartos a little bit, but mostly Oz and McCormick. The biggest reason for that, honestly, is they are both very, very rich men and they've put a lot of their own money into the ads that you just two of them, you just played, but they're just blanketing Pennsylvania right now, and also they have very powerful packs backing them. These guys, again, they have a ton of cash, and that has really affected this race.
Brigid Bergin: Can you talk a little bit about how McCormack's campaign has focused on Dr. Oz's dual citizenship with Turkey? Is this an indication that Republicans are really leaning into identity politics locally and nationally?
Katie Meyer: It is interesting. Dr. Oz, I should say Mehmet Oz, is a dual citizen the US and Turkey. He is Turkish-born and he's Muslim and he's got family there. His mother lives in Turkey. McCormack's campaign, they haven't really focused on the fact that he is Muslim, he would be the first Muslim US Senator, but they have leaned into the Turkish citizenship part as this national security issue, and they called on him to renounce his citizenship. Originally, he said he wouldn't, but then he did say, "Oh yes, no, if I became a US Senator, I would renounce my dual citizenship". Then he did also try to say this is a racist smear against me.
It is a funny dynamic to see in a Republican race because I do think there's this perception in the Republican primary especially, that our identity politics, that's a democratic thing, and if Oz is going to say anything about us bringing up his Turkish citizenship, we can say he's doing identity politics or something. I don't know if there's any actual national security issues with the dual citizenship. I think that's beside the point at this point. Certainly, there are questions about having a Senator who's a dual citizen, but I think this is really more about the perception of how this would play in a state like Pennsylvania state, they overwhelmingly elect white men to statewide office.
In some ways, yes, it would be notable for Oz to be elected, just because of his background, but I think again, the McCormick campaign is banking on this idea of, "Oh, we're going to otherize this guy, we're going to sow this idea that he has different allegiances, and watching Oz try to combat that has been interesting.
Brigid Bergin: Is there anything to the assertion that he doesn't support Republican policies, this RINO attack, Republican in name only, do you have a sense of what his politics actually are?
Katie Meyer: I think with anybody who has been in the public eye as long as Mehmet Oz and in the capacity that he has as an entertainment personality, yes, he's absolutely said things that I would say a Republican politician probably wouldn't have said. He's been pretty supportive of the Affordable Care Act, of the idea of people having access to healthcare. That's one of the big ones that has come back to haunt him a little bit in these ads.
There's very superficial things, like he very recently got a star in the Hollywood walk of fame and there was a photo that went around of him kissing it, which is the perfect thing for Dave McCormick to put into an attack ad and say, "Oh, he's a Hollywood liberal, and he doesn't share our Pennsylvania values". On the subject of our Pennsylvania values, I should say, McCormick until very recently lived in Connecticut, although he is from Pittsburgh. Oz until very recently lived in New Jersey. He went to school at Penn, but other than that, his Pennsylvania connection is really just because his wife grew up here.
We have a lot of, I would say, two relatively similar candidates in terms of their backgrounds, not like they had the same job, but just in terms of their connections to the state and their politics over the years, really shifting very hard right quite recently. There's a lot more in common there than I think they would want you to understand.
Brigid Bergin: There've been multiple reports that they have been courting, former President Trump seeking his endorsement. Any indications if Trump is leaning one way or another, and will that actually matter?
Katie Meyer: We haven't really had much of an indication from Trump himself. He already endorsed very, very early on in this race, he endorsed Sean Parnell, who was a very close ally, and who had run for Congress before unsuccessfully, but Parnell dropped out of the race. He was in a very nasty divorce and it came out that allegedly, he had hit his wife, hit his kids, and he dropped out of the race. Trump has not gotten back in there. Parnell did endorse Dave McCormick who eagerly accepted that, maybe as an endorsement by proxy.
No, we still see both of them really courting Trump, trying to get former staffers who were associated with Trump, onto their campaigns. We have seen rhetoric that really, really closely mirrors Trump. I went to an event with Oz and he was saying things about, "Oh, the elites in Washington, they don't share our values, they want to change you, my, our values." There's this idea of really trying to form this comradery with Pennsylvanians, rural people, people who feel disaffected by loss of industry in the same way Trump did, and whether they're going to be successful in that, who's to say. Obviously, either one of these candidates would jump at an endorsement.
Brigid Bergin: We're going to have to leave it there. Katie Meyer, reporter for WHYY. Thank you for joining us today.
Katie Meyer: Thank you.
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