Republicans see Democrat Senator Bob Casey’s seat as an opportunity, but primary infighting could derail their plans.
Casey announced he will seek his fourth term to defend a pivotal swing state Senate seat, kicking off a Republican primary that could take down both frontrunners in a race to the right.
After Trump-backed Mehmet Oz failed to impress voters, the GOP is looking to improve the quality of the candidate it puts forward this time around.
They hope to achieve that with former Senate candidate Dave McCormick, who lost the 2022 primary to Oz by less than 1,000 votes.
However, their plans may be detailed by former gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano.
Mastriano lost the governor’s race to now-Governor Josh Shapiro by nearly 15 percentage points.
While he hasn’t formally announced a run for the Senate seat, GOP operatives with knowledge of Pennsylvania say Mastriano is “getting every single duck in a row” for a potential campaign.
“He’s doing everything in his power to consolidate his base and to make sure they’re staying with him in the event that he runs,” the operative said, pointing to his recent restart of Facebook Live events that Mastriano frequently held during his 2022 campaign.
But the operative said McCormick’s allies see a potential Mastriano run as a strong push for McCormick to formally join the race.
“It’s reinvigorating the McCormick people,” the first operative said, adding that they’ve “gone from asking him to run to begging him to run.”
McCormick has already received pledges of support from party leaders, including Senator Steve Daines (R-MT), the chairman of the Senate GOP campaign arm, as well as allies of Senator Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) who run the Senate Leadership Fund.
That has apparently not dissuaded Mastriano, which Democrat operatives delighted in to The Hill.
“It’s going to be a fairly nasty primary and whoever comes out of that is going to be damaged,” said one such Pennsylvania Democratic operative. “In order to win a Republican primary in Pennsylvania these days it seems like you really have to go far to the right and then that hurts you in the general.”
The operative added that no matter which candidate Republican voters select, Casey’s campaign is “confident” he can withstand the challenge.
Pennsylvania, if you can bring yourself to believe that any elective race result is fairly and honestly arrived at there, must be the stupidest collection of dolts, morons and idiots on earth! They sent a severely and irretrievably damaged halfwit to the senate and he fell apart. Now, his lovely and extreme leftist harridan wife is running his show for the dnc, what a hero? I live in ill-noise, where it’s disgusting but nowhere near as bad as pencilvaneya. Soon come, hell’s a-poppin’!
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