commonwealth. the senate gop primary. hedge fund guy dave mccormick and trump-endorsed tv doc dr. mehmet oz locked in a tighter than tight battle. look at that. just 2,600 votes apart. the trumpiest candidate really not endorsed by him kathy barnette trailing despite what looked like a late surge and people were concerned she might actually win, or could win. cnn projects doug mastriano, a champion of the bogus big lie of election fraud, in 2020 has won the gop governor s primary there. and talk about high drama. as cnn projects john fetterman wins pennsylvania s democratic senate primary. he is exactly where he didn t expect to be right now, though, watching from his hospital bed. he s recovering from surgery to get a pacemaker today after he suffered a stroke on friday. and then there is north carolina. that s where madison cawthorn has conceded to chuck edwards. the 26-year-old cawthorn conceding after multiple scandals, everything from bringing a loaded handgun through a
however, mccormick is doing pretty well in suburban counties and also this base of pittsburgh where he grew up. so you see mccormick has a lot of room to grow in some of the bigger counties in the state but it s pretty clear that barnette ate into oz and that s got to be driving the trump folks crazy tonight. listen, that was one of my first stations that i worked at in philadelphia and we used to cover all these elections. you never know in pennsylvania. it goes blue, red, blue, red. so you never know what s going to happen. if not for barnette, where would mehmet oz be right now, do you think? you ve got to say, again, for reasons i just showed, that kathy barnette has taken away from oz s total. if kathy barnette hadn t been eating into odds s position you d guess he d be in pole position. i want to contrast how tight this race is. we could be heading to recount territory. with for example what happened in the governor s race. the governor s race tonight mastriano basically swee
i mean, they all embrace trump. but if you ask my opinion, i would tell you that i think mccormick is a much stronger general election candidate than oz against fetterman. and i think he would actually beat fetterman. against oz i think it s a more competitive race. but i think mccormick has a good profile, particularly for the suburban areas of pennsylvania for a general election. and charlie hits on the important takeaway of the night, is the republican party needs to look at nominating candidates that will win the general election as opposed to just the primary. he wi we need to elect candidates that are reflective of the republican party not trump s wing of the republican party. you think mccormick can win a general election? absolutely. against fetterman certainly he can. he s certainly a lot more moderate than oz and barnette as well. and look, this is obviously close. in speaking with mccormick s campaign tonight, they re looking at the absentee ballots, the ones that are
in the democratic party is simply this. the democratic party, you saw malcolm kenyatta tonight, who ran an amazing race even though he got 10% of the vote. malcolm kenyatta is a very, very young candidate. he s an awe-inspiring candidate. gay black man who ran extremely strong in philadelphia. what s happening is the democratic party has already consolidated around fetterman. we re going to go out there and do whatever we can around fetterman. this race is going to boil down to whether or not black folk can come out and vote in philadelphia and the surrounding areas. and i believe they will. the difference, though, is fetterman can do something that other candidates in pennsylvania have not been able to do, which is that fetterman can speak to rural white voters. he simply can. and i think dave mccormick s going to have a problem because a hedge fund guy who all of a sudden is a common man? that s a hard sell. regardless of what people are saying. it isn t that hang on. go ahead.
which is where you re from. less than 1,000 votes or about 1,000 votes that separate plk kormic and dr. oz. what the heck is going on will? we knew this was going to be a tight race between oz and mccormick. and certainly barnette was surging but they tamped her down pretty well over the last few days. so i m not at all surprised by this. it s interesting that none of the candidates who ran for the senate, there were seven republican candidates i believe for senate in pennsylvania, not one has ever held elected office. and the two leaders, oz and mccormick, haven t lived in the state for a very long time. it s 920 votes. can we get the tally on the big wall? down to 900 and about 20 votes here. it s too close to call. some of these counties aren t going to get into some of these mail-in votes until tomorrow. and some i think cumberland county and a few others. but bottom line is we knew this was going to be a tight race and it just seems to me that mccormick has performed well.