Hard-right candidate Kathy Barnette has come from nowhere to make the Republican Senate primary in Pennsylvania one of the tightest and most interesting races in the country.
Barnette, a conservative commentator, is gaining fast on two candidates who have vastly outspent her: TV personality Mehmet Oz, who is backed by former President Trump, and businessman David McCormick.
Barnette was in fifth place and in single digits in the RealClearPolitics polling average just last month. She’s now polling around 20 percent in the multicandidate race, on a near par with Oz and McCormick. A Barnette victory in Tuesday’s primary is very plausible.
“It’s nip and tuck right now,” said Terry Madonna, a senior fellow in residence for political affairs at Millersville University and a longtime expert on polling and Pennsylvania politics. “It’s a real three-way race.”
Barnette’s rise has set alarm bells ringing across a swath of the political spectrum, however.
Her polling climb concerns moderate Republicans who fear she is unelectable in a general election, prominent backers of Trump who think she might thwart Oz and centrists who fret she is another emblem of the nation’s accelerating polarization.
The only two camps that are happy are Barnette and her backers, now including the well-financed Club for Growth, and Democrats who think she might be the most beatable of the three leading Republican candidates.
A Thursday report from CNN’s “K-File” team unearthed old comments from Barnette in...
“When companies use kickbacks to influence prescribing, they erode trust in healthcare providers,” said special agent Helsing. Takeda Pharmaceuticals, U.S.A. Inc has agreed to $13,670,921 amid alle...