PITTSBURGH (TNS) — With eight weeks left in the campaign for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate, Montgomery County businessman Jeff Bartos is telling the large swath of undecided GOP voters that he has a “deep, proven commitment” to Pennsylvania and wants to revitalize its main streets.
Bartos, interviewed in Pittsburgh Monday, labels himself a “true Pennsylvanian” — a phrase that not only serves as a jab at two of his primary opponents who just recently moved to the state to run, but aims to relate to those he hopes to serve: small business owners and residents who were hit hard by the pandemic, then hit again by inflation.
Bartos, 49, insists that “kitchen table issues” are what will win the GOP one of the most important seats in the country, and deems inflation a result of President Joe Biden’s economic policies. They disincentivized people to work and flooded the economy with too much money but not enough goods to buy, he said.
Echoing other Republicans running in state races, Mr. Bartos talks of there being enough natural gas in Pennsylvania to power the U.S. and its allies for hundreds of years, and says the Biden administration’s position on energy — discouraging investment into anything but alternative energy — is partly to blame for inflation.
”What a senator can do, one from Pennsylvania, will be to go to Washington every day to fight to make sure we clear out all the roadblocks to getting permits improved,” Bartos said, calling for more energy infrastructure so allies don’t have to rely on Russian energy. “Pennsylvania gas should be flowing through pipelines to New Englandand down to the Gulf coast.”
To an extent, the political horse race is unavoidable; Bartos said the airwaves in Pennsylvania are full of candidates attacking each other — referring, most likely, to the barrage of ads from those linked to frontrunners David McCormick, a former hedge fund CEO, and Dr. Mehmet Oz.
In a recent Fox News poll of registered GOP voters, McCormick led at 24%, followed by Oz at 15%. Bartos was among those receiving support in the single digits; he and political commentator Kathy Barnette were at 9% each, and former U.S. ambassador Carla Sands checked in at 6%.
But the main takeaway for Daron Shaw, the Republican who co-conducted the survey, was that “Republican voters have not yet honed in on the candidates,” he told Fox News. The poll found that nearly one-third (31%) were unsure who they’ll back.
Bartos, who was one of the earliest entrants to the race, deems the frontrunners “political tourists” who see an opportunity hold an office, not serve the public.
”They’ve made this campaign about them — their life stories, their histories, their narratives,” Bartos said. “My whole campaign is about the people of Pennsylvaniaand the kitchen table issues that impact their daily lives.”
McCormick lived in Connecticut for the past 12 years and was a top executive at one of the world’s largest hedge funds, Bridgewater, and has stressed his upbringing in Pennsylvania and the fact he recently bought a house in Pittsburgh.
Oz, a longtime New Jersey resident, has said he’s renting his in-laws’ home in an affluent Philadelphia suburb. He also notes that he grew up not far from Philadelphia— in Wilmington, Del. — went to medical school there and married a Pennsylvania native.
That hasn’t stopped Bartos from asking where the two were for past two years while Pennsylvania battled the COVID-19 pandemic. He was helping raise $3.6 million for small businesses, grouped under a nonprofit called the Pennsylvania 30 Day Fund, he notes.
{p class=”krtText”}That’s why he’s the best candidate to face a Democrat in the general election, he says; while they were pushing lockdowns and suffocating businesses during the pandemic, he was helping.
{p class=”krtText”}Also running for Senate are attorney Sean Gale of Plymouth and Philadelphia attorney George Bochetto.
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