ICYMI: ‘Why lie to me?’ Senate race rivals attack carpetbaggery [Associated Press]

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

Associated Press: ‘Why lie to me?’ Senate race rivals attack carpetbaggery
By Marc Levy
January 12, 2022

Key Points:

• The title of “Pennsylvanian”… it’s increasingly the go-to weapon for Republican primary candidates in one of the nation’s premier U.S. Senate contests.

• A wide-open race for the swing-state seat being vacated by two-term Republican Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania has attracted wealthy and well-connected transplants, and homers Jeff Bartos and George Bochetto are seizing on it.

• Bartos, a real-estate investor from suburban Philadelphia, derides the transplants as “political tourists.”

• Bochetto… suggested that his out-of-state rivals shouldn’t bother spending millions to try to convince voters they really are Pennsylvanians.

• “They should be honest about it and just flat out say, ‘Look, I haven’t lived in Pennsylvania and I’m not a citizen of Pennsylvania, but I’m coming in because there’s a provision in the Constitution that allows me to do so,’” Bochetto said in an interview. “And that’s fine. But why lie to me?”

• “Certainly that’s going to be an issue for some people,” said Richard Stewart, a central caucus co-chair.

• “I want to say clearly for all the other people running out there who are just getting to Pennsylvania for the first time, just visiting places for the first time: You cannot save Main Street if you don’t even know how to find it,” Bartos — the party’s 2018 nominee for lieutenant governor — said.

• While he was raising money for struggling Pennsylvania businesses during the pandemic, his competitors were “living in mansions overlooking Manhattan, on the Gold Coast of Connecticut or in a foreign country,” Bartos told the crowd.

• Sands, 61, a Pennsylvania native, spent the majority of the last four decades in California — pursuing acting and helping run her late husband’s real estate investment firm… She sold her homes in Malibu and Bel Air, returned to the U.S. in early 2021 and rented a condo overlooking the Susquehanna River with views of the state Capitol.

• Oz, 61, is a longtime resident of Cliffside Park, New Jersey, where his mansion overlooks the Hudson River across from Manhattan.

• Since 2009, [McCormick] has lived in Connecticut, where he worked for one of the world’s largest hedge funds, Bridgewater Associates.

• Asked if he thinks they’ll turn around and leave Pennsylvania if they lose the primary, Bochetto said, “There is no doubt in my mind. Not a doubt.”

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