(Bloomberg) — Former Bridgewater Associates chief executive officer David McCormick has to quickly readjust his strategy for the Republican Senate primary in Pennsylvania after Donald Trump’s surprise endorsement of the other top contender, celebrity physician Mehmet Oz.
Trump endorsed Oz, known for hosting the long-running “Dr. Oz Show,” on Saturday in arguably the former president’s most consequential nod of the 2022 midterms. Polls show a close race between McCormick and Oz in a crowded primary election that will ultimately help decide which party controls the Senate.
John Brabender, a Republican strategist who served as a senior adviser to former Pennsylvania senator and 2016 presidential candidate Rick Santorum, said the endorsement is a major boost for Oz that he can now highlight in his campaign but isn’t necessarily fatal to McCormick and others in the primary.
“I don’t believe it’s enough to win the race for Oz, but in a very close race, I think it’s enough to put Oz over the top,” Brabender said.
The endorsement will force the Senate campaigns to retool and determine how they can draw hard-core Trump supporters since he’s backing Oz, said Christopher Nicholas, a Pennsylvania Republican strategist.
McCormick started airing an ad Monday on broadcast and cable television in response to the Trump endorsement accusing Oz of being “a complete and total fraud.” It shows clips of Oz from his former television show and other appearances taking different positions than he has today, including praising Dr. Anthony Fauci and China and asking, “how do we keep guns out of the wrong person’s hands?”
The ad accuses Oz of being “anti-Trump” and includes a clip of him saying, “We haven’t any interaction with President Trump at all.” It ends with images of Oz kissing a star in his honor on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, backing up accusations from McCormick’s allies that he’s really a “Hollywood liberal.”
“It’s no surprise McCormick is using the same bag of tricks that Never Trumpers used against President Trump,” Oz spokeswoman Brittany Yanick said in a response to the ad. “Dr. Mehmet Oz is endorsed by President Trump, and like him isn’t afraid to call out complete fake news.”
McCormick’s campaign said it’s not changing its approach as a result of Trump’s involvement in the race. Campaign general counsel Jeff Roe on Monday repeated his reaction to the endorsement, saying, “Dave McCormick is going to be the next Senator from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.”
Last November, Roe helped steer Republican Glenn Youngkin’s upset of Terry McAuliffe in Virginia’s gubernatorial race. A former co-chief executive officer of Carlyle Group, Youngkin’s winning strategy included keeping Trump at a distance as not to alienate suburban independent voters.
A RealClearPolitics average of polls shows McCormick with a lead of 2.6 percentage points over Oz in the GOP contest. Both McCormick and Oz heavily courted Trump’s endorsement as a way to tap into his energetic base. McCormick surrounded himself with former Trump administration officials and visited Trump’s Florida estate as recently as last week to seek his endorsement, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Both have aired ads playing up their support for Trump and his “America First” agenda.
Surveys last year by Franklin and Marshall College found that the largest percentage of commonwealth Republicans consider themselves “Trump Republicans,” and an Emerson College Polling/The Hill Pennsylvania poll last month showed 61% would be more likely to vote for a candidate Trump endorsed.
“The president’s endorsement is very important, especially in a close race,” said Rob Gleason, a former chairman of the Republican Party of Pennsylvania who’s backing McCormick in the primary.
The greatest advantage of the Trump endorsement for Oz is that he doesn’t have to spend as much time trying to prove his conservative bonafides, Brabender said. He said the value of the endorsement will also depend on what Trump does to promote it. A Trump spokesman wouldn’t confirm reports that locations are being scouted in Pennsylvania for a rally 10 days before the May 17 primary.
But Trump’s endorsement sparked opposition among some pro-Trump figures on Twitter who are skeptical of Oz. Conservative radio host Erick Erickson suggested in a tweet that Trump’s staff “is sabotaging Trump by convincing him to make the worst possible endorsements.”
Sean Parnell, the candidate Trump initially endorsed before he dropped out in November and has now endorsed McCormick, said on Twitter he has enormous respect for Trump but that Oz “is the antithesis of everything that made Trump the best president of my lifetime.”
(Corrects percentage in 13th paragraph)
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