Reshuffle ahead for GOP in Pennsylvania’s Senate race

HARRISBURG, PA. >> The Republican field of candidates aiming to capture Pennsylvania’s open U.S. Senate seat in next year’s election is churning anew, with the candidate endorsed by former President Donald Trump out and intriguing new candidates possibly in.

Out is Sean Parnell — a favorite of Donald Trump Jr. — who ended his campaign after losing a custody battle in court in which the judge said he believed allegations of abuse made by Parnell’s estranged wife.

“With the leading candidate getting out, that’s certainly going to create a reshuffling of the race here,” said Sam DeMarco, the chair of the Allegheny County Republican Party.

The high-stakes campaign to replace retiring Republican Sen. Pat Toomey in the battleground state could determine control of the Senate in next year’s election.

Who might get in? Maybe a couple guys who are relative unknowns to many party figures but are otherwise prominent in their own fields.

First, there is Mehmet

Oz, the cardiac surgeon, author and host of TV’s “Dr. Oz Show” who gained fame as a protégé of Oprah Winfrey. The longtime resident of Cliffside Park, New Jersey, just across the Hudson River from New York City, now says that he has lived in Pennsylvania since last year, even though he films the show and practices medicine in Manhattan.

The other is David McCormick, a Connecticut resident who runs one of the world’s largest hedge funds, Bridgewater Associates, but grew up in Pennsylvania as the son of a former chancellor of the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education.

Both have said little publicly, if anything, but are active behind the scenes.

Here’s a look at the landscape:

The most prominent Republicans already running are conservative commentator Kathy Barnette, real estate investor Jeff Bartos and Carla Sands, Trump’s ambassador to Denmark.

Of them, none has won elective office before, and only Bartos has run statewide in Pennsylvania.

Bartos is perhaps bestknown to party members after winning the nomination for lieutenant governor in 2018 and running with gubernatorial nominee Scott Wagner on the unsuccessful ticket.

He also declared for Senate earlier than the others.

“Jeff Bartos is way ahead of everybody else,” said Jackie Kulback, chair of the Cambria County Republican Party.

Bartos, she said, has a campaign point person in every county, has visited every county and has campaign offices open all over the state.

One of the head-scratchers for Republicans is the influx of candidates who, until recently at least, did not live in Pennsylvania.

The more important qualification, it seems, is that they are rich.

“You have to look at where politics has gone in regards to money, in the fact that it is incredibly expensive to run for a major office today and you’re talking tens of millions of dollars,” DeMarco said. “This Senate race will probably be the most expensive Senate race in history.”

A constitutional qualification to serve as a senator is to be an inhabitant of the state when they are elected.