The Times Herald (Norristown, PA)
GOP intervenes in 11th-hour Pa. Senate race ballot lawsuit
HARRISBURG » The national and state Republican parties are taking the same side as celebrity heart surgeon Dr. Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania’s neck-andneck GOP primary contest for U.S. Senate and opposing a lawsuit that could help former hedge fund CEO David McCormick close the gap in votes.
The court battle could go to the U.S. Supreme Court. McCormick’s lawsuit was filed late Monday, less than 24 hours before Tuesday’s 5 p.m. deadline for counties to report their unofficial results to the state.
In it, McCormick asked the state Commonwealth Court to require counties to obey a brand-new federal appeals court decision and promptly count mail-in ballots that lack a required handwritten date on the return envelope.
Oz, who is endorsed by former President Donald Trump, has pressed counties not to count the ballots and the Republican National Committee and state GOP said they would go to court to oppose McCormick.
In a statement, the RNC’s chief counsel, Matt Raymer, said “election laws are meant to be followed, and changing the rules when ballots are already being counted harms the integrity of our elections.”
McCormick is doing better than Oz in mail-in ballots and has insisted that “every Republican vote should count.” McCormick’s campaign chair, James Schultz, lashed out at the state party chairman, Lawrence Tabas, saying Tabas “cares so little” about Republicans who voted for McCormick.
Tabas is supposed to “grow GOP voters and bring the party together, not to cast them aside and drive wedges,” Schultz said.
Meanwhile, Tuesday, Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration issued guidance to counties saying that any ballots without dates must be counted, citing the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision from Friday.
But it also said counties should keep those ballots separate — an acknowledgment that lawyers for defendants in the federal appeals court case said they will appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
McCormick’s lawsuit is the first — but likely not the last — lawsuit in the contest between Oz and McCormick.
Oz led McCormick by 997 votes, or 0.07 percentage points, out of 1,341,184 ballots reported by the state as of mid-day Tuesday morning.
The race is close enough to trigger Pennsylvania’s automatic recount law, with the separation between the candidates inside the law’s 0.5% margin. The Associated Press will not declare a winner in the race until the likely recount is complete. That could take until June 8.
Oz and McCormick are vying for the nomination to take on Democratic nominee John Fetterman in a presidential battleground contest that is expected to be among the nation’s most competitive races this fall. The seat is open because two-term Republican Sen. Pat Toomey is retiring, creating the Democrats’
PENNDOT
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best opportunity to pick up a seat in the closely divided Senate.
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