HARRISBURG — Pennsylvania’s leading Republican candidates for U.S. Senate faced off in a live debate Monday night, championing conservative ideals, attacking the policies of President Joe Biden’s administration and attacking each other.
The debate, televised across Pennsylvania and streamed online, was the first to include the party’s current polling leaders, celebrity surgeon and television personality Mehmet Oz and former hedge fund manager and combat veteran David McCormick.
The two traded barbs throughout the night, largely with McCormick citing past comments by Oz to frame him as a liberal and a flip-flopper on issues of fracking, gender identity and COVID-19 mitigation.
Oz worked to brush off the criticism, taking a pro-life and pro-energy stance, and frequently reminded his fellow candidates and the debate audience that President Donald Trump has endorsed him in the election.
“Trump endorsed me,” Oz said when defending his position on abortion, which he said is one of pro-life with limited exceptions when a woman’s life is jeopardized by the pregnancy.
“He can’t run on his own positions and his own record,” McCormick said of Oz’s reliance on Trump. For what it’s worth, McCormick agrees with exceptions for abortion. All the candidates express pro-life positions.
There were five Republican candidates on stage at the WHTM/abc27 studios in Harrisburg. Their Democratic rivals participated in a separate debate Monday night. Also appearing on the debate stage for the Republicans were conservative political commentator Kathy Barnette, real estate developer Jeff Bartos, and former ambassador to Denmark, Carla Sands. Falling short of the polling threshold to join them were Republican candidates George Brochette and Sean Gale.
At stake is a seat in the U.S. Senate, replacing Republican Sen. Pat Toomey, who’s retiring. The primary election is May 17, with the general election on Nov. 8.
Whoever Pennsylvania voters ultimately send to Washington could tip the balance of power in the Senate. Democrats currently hold the majority by aligning with two independents and holding the tie-breaking vote of Vice President Kamala Harris.
Sands and Barnette sparred separately, at times. Sands used Barnette’s 2020 election loss for Congress to say she wasn’t electable since she lost by nearly 20 points to a “weak” Democrat. Barnette took the opportunity to position Sands as having no concerns about election integrity. Sands later said outright the 2020 election was stolen for Biden and both said the party shouldn’t move past the matter.
Sands also hit at McCormick, calling him “China first” because of his former firm’s dealings in that country. McCormick said he wouldn’t discount his success and was quick to claim having created 600 jobs in the state.
For his part, Bartos avoided attacks on the candidates. Had there been a drinking game in which the audience drank each time the candidates spoke of themselves, he said, the audience would be drunk. Bartos opted instead to tout the need to legislate for Main Street, both in Pennsylvania and America, frequently returning to the concept throughout the one-hour debate.
“This election has to be about the voters,” Bartos said, “not about us.”
Bartos said he supports policies to “unleash Pennsylvania’s natural energy resources” and would fight for pipeline projects to put natural gas to market.
He called the American Rescue Plan a disaster that he’d have voted against. If elected, he said that he’d push for policies in support of economic growth, safe communities, parental control.
All of the candidates said they’d vote in support of laws banning transgender women from competing in women’s sports.
They all supported a federal judge’s ruling to keep Title 42 in place, a Trump-era restriction on entry into the country during pandemic emergencies. They hammered pandemic policies like masking and vaccine mandates, and they all expressed support in boosting Pennsylvania’s natural gas industry.
“Fauci should be fired,” Oz said of Dr. Anthony Fauci, chief medical advisor to the president and frequent target of conservatives.
McCormick said it wasn’t so long ago that Oz expressed support for Fauci and masking. In retort, Oz said caution was needed at the outset of the pandemic but that he pushed back later and risked being “canceled.”
During the pandemic, Bartos said McCormick huddled away in Aspen, Colorado, while Oz was in New Jersey. Bartos spoke of his launch of the PA 30-Day Fund, which provided forgivable loans of up to $3,000 to small business owners, ultimately lending several million dollars.
The debate opened with a question about residency, something both Oz and McCormick have come under scrutiny about. Oz spent much of his career living and working in New Jersey. McCormick recently lived in Connecticut where he served as CEO of the world’s largest hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates.
Oz didn’t dispute the lead-in to the question that he’s only lived in Pennsylvania while he attended medical school and graduate school at University of Pennsylvania prior to establishing residency ahead of the election cycle.
“The Pennsylvanians who I speak to care much more about what I stand for than where I’m from,” Oz said.
McCormick touted his family ties in Pennsylvania. He grew up in Bloomsburg and now owns his family’s farm there.
. He said he left initially to attend U.S. Military Academy West Point, served in combat with the 82nd Airborne Division in the first Gulf War and returned and spent the next 10 years building a company in Pittsburgh.



