HARRISBURG, PA (AP) – Former hedge fund CEO David McCormick has awarded the Republican primary in Pennsylvania for the U.S. Senate to famed cardiac surgeon Mehmet Oz, and ended his campaign Friday night , as he acknowledged that an ongoing statewide count would not give him enough votes to make up for the deficit.
McCormick said he had called on Oz to give in.
“It’s clear to me now, with the count, largely completed, that we have a candidate,” McCormick said at a campaign party at a Pittsburgh hotel.
He added: “Tonight is really about getting everyone together.”
Prior to the count, Oz led McCormick by 972 votes out of the 1.34 million votes counted in the May 17 primary. The Associated Press has not declared the winner of the race because an automatic count is being made and the margin between the two candidates is only 0.07 percentage points.
Development on Friday sets a general election between Oz, which was endorsed by former President Donald Trump, and Democrat John Fetterman in what is expected to be one of the main contests in the country’s Senate.
The result could help determine control of the tightly divided chamber, and Democrats see it as perhaps the best chance of getting a seat in the race to replace retiring Republican Sen. Pat Toomey.
Fetterman, the state’s lieutenant governor, acknowledged earlier Friday in a statement that he nearly died when he suffered a stroke just days before his primaries. He said he had ignored the warning signs for years and advised a doctor to take anticoagulants.
Oz, best known as the presenter of The Dr. Oz Show, had to spend millions of dollars on advertisements for attacks and suspicion among hardline Trump supporters over his conservative credentials about weapons. , abortion, transgender and other rights. basic Republican issues.
Oz, 61, relied on Trump’s endorsement as proof of his conservative good faith, while Trump attacked Oz’s rivals and argued that Oz had the best chance of winning the field in November. of presidential battle.
Rivals made Oz’s dual citizenship in Turkey a problem in the race. If elected, Oz would be the nation’s first Muslim senator.
Born in the United States, Oz served in the Turkish military and voted in the 2018 election. Oz said he would relinquish his Turkish citizenship if he won the November election and accused McCormick of making “fanatical” attacks.
Oz and McCormick covered state airwaves with political announcements for months, spending millions of their own money. Virtually unknown to voters four months ago, McCormick had to introduce himself to voters and exploited Oz’s long history as a public figure to find material in attack ads. He received help from a super PAC who supported him and spent $ 20 million.
Like McCormick, Oz moved out of state to run in Pennsylvania.
Oz, a Harvard graduate, New York Times best-selling author and self-proclaimed advocate of welfare, has lived for the past two decades in a mansion in Cliffside Park, New Jersey, on the Hudson River overlooking Manhattan; tourist.
The famous heart surgeon highlighted his connections to Pennsylvania, saying he grew up right on the state border in Delaware, went to medical school in Philadelphia, and married a native of Pennsylvania.
Prior to running, McCormick was a celebrity on Wall Street, ran the world’s largest hedge fund, and had strong ties to the Republican Party. W. Bush. His wife, Dina Powell, was Trump’s deputy national security adviser and also had strong ties to the party.
McCormick had long considered running for public office and moved from his luxurious Gold Coast home in Connecticut to a home in Pittsburgh before declaring his candidacy.
He highlighted his connections to Pennsylvania: growing up on a farm as a star of wrestling and high school football before going to West Point and fighting in the Gulf War. He also spent 10 years in Pittsburgh on business, which gave him a stronger appeal in Pennsylvania than in Oz.
Like Oz, McCormick had worked hard to win Trump’s endorsement and insisted he was the real “America First” candidate, invoking Trump’s nickname for his philosophy of government.
However, Trump repeatedly attacked McCormick during the last two weeks of the campaign, leading a rally for Oz in which he called McCormick the “candidate of special interests and globalists and the Washington establishment.”
Despite this, McCormick closed the campaign by airing a television ad showing a video clip of Trump at a 2020 private ceremony congratulating McCormick, saying “you have served our country well in many different ways.”
“You know why he said that,” McCormick said in the TV ad. “It simply came to our notice then. I risked my life for America and would do it again in an instant. … I’m a pro-life conservative, pro-gun, America First and I’m very proud of that. “
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