Trump says ‘Oz won’ Pa. GOP Senate primary — despite likely recount
Former President Donald Trump claimed Wednesday that former TV host Dr. Mehmet Oz “won” the Pennsylvania Republican Senate primary — despite Oz holding a razor-thin lead with thousands of mail-in ballots and Pittsburgh-area votes left to count.
Trump endorsed Oz and attacked his chief rival, David McCormick, during the final stretch of the campaign.
“The Club For Growth Candidate [Kathy Barnette], who lost, took many votes away from Oz. Also, early Mail-In Ballots were sent without my having endorsed yet. Despite all of this, Oz won!” Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social.
Trump, who lost Pennsylvania in 2020 due to mail-in ballots that heavily favored President Biden, added: “Here we go again! In Pennsylvania they are unable to count the Mail-In Ballots. It is a BIG MESS. Our Country should go to paper ballots, with same day voting. Just done in France, zero problems. Get Smart America!!!”
As of Wednesday afternoon, Oz led McCormick by 0.2% of the vote — a margin of fewer than 2,200 ballots cast — with 96.2% of the expected vote in. Under Pennsylvania law, an automatic recount is triggered if the final margin of any statewide race is 0.5% or fewer.
In addition to a large number of absentee ballots that remain to be counted, 33 voting precincts in McCormick���s home base of Allegheny County, which includes Pittsburgh, have not reported results and an online message Wednesday said the county election board would not update its vote counts until after a Friday morning meeting of its Return Board.
Allegheny County spokesperson Amie Downs told The Post that the board cannot meet until three days after the primary by Pennsylvania law.
“We have to go through this process each year to make sure that we have them [ballots and voting machines] so this is nothing unusual. Happens all the time. It’s nothing nefarious or anything else,” Downs said. “I think it’s just about getting all the materials back and together … but the Return Board is the actual process that gives you the results.”
Later on Wednesday, Trump urged Oz to declare victory, saying “It makes it much harder for them to cheat with ballots that they ‘just happened to find.'”
The Pennsylvania count is expected to drag on for days due to the state’s election procedures. The Keystone State allows no-excuse voting by mail, but does not allow election workers to process ballots sent in early until 7 a.m. on voting day at the earliest. According to Votebeat, Pennsylvanians requested 908,903 mail ballots for Tuesday’s primary.
The former president’s endorsement frequently has been decisive in settling contested Republican primaries, but Trump took two big blows on Tuesday when Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC) and Idaho gubernatorial candidate Janice McGeachin lost their races despite the 45th president’s backing.
Trump did score a big win in Pennsylvania when his choice of gubernatorial candidate, state Sen. Doug Mastriano, easily won that primary after championing the former president’s claims that voter fraud resulted in his 2020 loss to Biden. Mastriano also attended the large pro-Trump rally that preceded last year’s Capitol riot and was caught on video walking through broken barricades during the violence.
Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, an ally of socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), easily won the Democratic primary for Senate, despite undergoing primary day surgery to install a pacemaker and defibrillator after suffering a stroke last week.
The general election victor will replace retiring Republican Sen. Pat Toomey.
Oz would be the nation’s first Muslim senator while McCormick, who earned $22 million last year, would be one of Congress’ richest members.
McCormick was CEO of the world’s largest hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates, until this year and won support from Trump West Wing advisers Kellyanne Conway and Hope Hicks and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. He’s married to former Trump deputy national security adviser Dina Powell.
Trump tore into McCormick at a recent rally, calling him a “liberal Wall Street Republican” who “is not MAGA.”
The ex-president also ridiculed McCormick’s aggressive hiring of his former aides, saying, “if anybody was within 200 miles of me, he hired them.”
McCormick’s campaign was buffeted by criticism of Bridgewater’s decision to raise $1.25 billion last year for new investments in China — making the firm one of the top foreign investors in the country. His allies also denied that he offshored jobs to India at a different company.
“I do know that he was with a company that managed money for Communist China, and he is absolutely the candidate of special interests and globalists and the Washington establishment,” Trump said at a rally for Oz, adding: “David is totally controlled, this is the opponent, by [Senate Minority Leader] Mitch McConnell, the old crow, the old broken-down crow.”
A super PAC backing McCormick’s candidacy reportedly spent more than $17 million, while a similar group backing Oz spent about $3 million.
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