GOP Senate, gubernatorial candidates outline their views at Southpointe forum
Brad Hundt/Observer-Reporter
A crowd listens to Republican candidates at a forum Wednesday night at Southpointe.
Brad Hundt/Observer-Reporter
Republican U.S. Senate candidates, from left, Kathy Barnette, Jeff Bartos, Carla Sands and George Bochetto, speak at a forum Wednesday night at Southpointe.
Republican U.S. Senate candidates David McCormick and Dr. Mehmet Oz have been generating national headlines thanks to the bare-knuckle brawl they’ve been carrying out through TV ads, but some of their lesser-known competitors got in some licks of their own at a candidate forum sponsored by Washington County’s Republican Party Wednesday night.
Neither McCormick nor Oz were present at the event at Noble Energy’s headquarters at Southpointe, and that led Jeff Bartos, a real estate developer and 2018 GOP nominee for lieutenant governor, to remark, “You should not support people who don’t show up.” Without naming either of the two front-running candidates, Bartos also slammed candidates “who parachuted in to run for the Senate,” referencing the fact that McCormick was a resident of Connecticut until recently, and Oz has called New Jersey his home until changing his voter registration to his in-laws’ residence in suburban Philadelphia in 2020.
Philadelphia lawyer George Bochetto went further, calling Oz, who holds dual citizenship in the United States and Turkey, “a Manchurian candidate.”
Otherwise, in three separate forums, the crowded field of GOP candidates for Senate, governor and lieutenant governor mostly refrained from attacking each other and aimed their invective at President Biden, Gov. Tom Wolf, critical race theory, mask mandates and high gas prices. Most painted a grim picture of a country and a commonwealth that are in dire straits.
“Pennsylvania is on a 50-year decline and it’s time to do something different,” said Jason Richey, a Beaver County native and lawyer running for governor. Many of the candidates sought to burnish their outsider credentials, with David White, another gubernatorial candidate, pointing to his status as a businessman, and describing himself as “a different kind of candidate.”
“Harrisburg is broken and it needs a businessman to fix it,” he said.
Many of the candidates also took a dim view of public education in Pennsylvania, vowing to allow more school choice. Lou Barletta, the former congressman and mayor running for governor, said that Pennsylvania schoolchildren are being “indoctrinated,” and “our children need to love their country.” State Sen. Doug Mastriano, the gubernatorial candidate who tended to get the most enthusiastic reaction from the crowd, said “kids are being brainwashed,” and Melissa Hart, the former congresswoman attempting a comeback in the governor’s race, said Pennsylvania is “graduating students to be dependent on government.”
The restrictions imposed by Wolf throughout the coronavirus pandemic were also harshly criticized. Dr. Nche Zama, an East Stroudsburg surgeon and gubernatorial candidate, suggested that Wolf should be “tried for crimes against humanity.”
While most of the candidates portrayed themselves as dedicated fighters for right-leaning causes and enemies of the left, a few suggested that there would be a need to work across the aisle once in office. Hart said she was “a coalition builder” while in Congress, and Rick Saccone, the former state representative running for lieutenant governor, explained that “this is about governing….You have to work with all kinds of different people (in Harrisburg) to get things done.”
The Republican and Democratic primary elections are set for Tuesday, May 17. There are 10 GOP candidates running for governor, nine for lieutenant governor, and seven seeking the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by two-term Republican Pat Toomey.