“Carpetbagger Accusations,” “Free-For-All,” “Republicans Expect Some Bloodletting:” Reports Continue to Highlight Nasty GOP Senate Primary in Pennsylvania

New reports continue to highlight how the “chaotic” GOP Senate primary in Pennsylvania has descended into a “free-for-all,” as the field of out-of-touch and out-of-state candidates take “intramural digs” at each other and prepare to “spend millions.”

See for yourself:

Associated Press: Rich? Want to be a U.S. senator? Welcome to Pennsylvania!
By Marc Levy
December 3, 2021

Key Points:

• Rich, Republican and want to be a U.S. senator? Pennsylvania might as well hang a welcome sign.

• Introducing Carla Sands, Mehmet Oz… and David McCormick, all three of whom seem prepared to spend millions of their own dollars.

• Sands… spent the majority of the last four decades in California before taking a post as Trump’s ambassador to Denmark and selling her homes in Malibu and Bel Air.

• Oz… longtime resident of Cliffside Park, New Jersey, claims he moved to Pennsylvania a year earlier, renting his in-laws’ home in suburban Philadelphia. However, his social media posts from the past year are full of photos of him in his Cliffside Park home overlooking the Hudson River across from Manhattan.

• For more than a decade, [McCormick] has lived in Connecticut, where he is CEO of one of the world’s largest hedge funds, Westport-based Bridgewater Associates.

• Carpetbagger accusations have trickled into races in Pennsylvania in the past, but not like this, said party officials and campaign veterans.

• As… other Republicans take stock of the field, the intramural digs are starting.

The Hill: GOP grapples with chaotic Senate primary in Pennsylvania
By Tal Axelrod
December 4, 2021

Key Points:

• The Senate GOP primary in Pennsylvania has become a free-for-all.

• The party is again contending with an unsettled field as big personalities — with big money behind them — make late entries into arguably the country’s most significant Senate race.

• Neither Oz nor McCormick is without baggage, leaving existing primary candidates — and Democrats — ready to pounce.

• Oz is expected to be pressed on his Turkish dual citizenship and his service in the Turkish military as well as over pushing diet pills and other medical advice that have been criticized as questionable or inaccurate.

• [McCormick’s] lived for years in Connecticut, and critics are expected to link him to accusations of offshoring jobs and comments from Bridgewater founder Ray Dalio this week comparing Chinese human rights violations to acting like a “strict parent.”

• “Or they can pick two out-of-state guys who have done more for China’s economy and Turkey’s army than they have for the people of Pennsylvania,” said Bartos campaign spokesman Conor McGuinness.

• Democrats… are happy to let the GOP sparring escalate.

• Republicans expect some bloodletting as the primary field grows — with DeMarco warning the race could get “nasty”

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