“The way I divide it is that you have a super-MAGA Trump, Trump-adjacent and not-so-Trump,” Christopher Nicholas, a longtime Republican consultant in Pennsylvania, said of the GOP’s likely field -senate. ‘All the former appointments would, of course, be in the super-MAGA-Trump part. I think a Jeff Bartos will be in the adjacent part of Trump. A [former Rep.] Ryan Costello-type figure, or himself when he climbs, will not be so trump-like in the lake. ”
Bartos, a real estate developer and the most popular candidate to officially declare his candidate, is named by his allies as a middle Republican who can win suburban residents in the Philadelphia collar land where he lives.
At the same time, Bartos donated money and helped raise money for GOP polling guards at the Philadelphia Conference Center in 2020 when the ballots were counted. And he travels to Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Florida resort and residence, for a recent backlash from GOP donors. Bartos was also wary of nodding to the former president in his launch video for the campaign.
“Donald Trump represented someone who listened to millions of Pennsylvania people who felt like no one was fighting for them,” Bartos said in the ad, in which he drives around the city. “And we can not go back to the days when elected officials in Washington viewed Pennsylvania as just two cities and a whole lot of agricultural land in between.”
Along with Bartos, Sean Parnell, a former congressional candidate who spoke at the Republican National Convention in 2020 and spoke with Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. near leaders of the state party. Mike Kelly and Guy Reschenthaler, two Pennsylvania House members who were Trump loyalists, are possible contenders. Also consider: Kenneth Braithwaite, who served as Trump’s secretary of the Navy; Carla Sands, Trump’s ambassador to Denmark; and John Giordano, a member of Trump’s delegation to the 2019 United Nations General Assembly.
Former Representative Ryan Costello, an outspoken critic of Trump, has also shown interest in a campaign. And the 2020 candidate Kathy Barnette and attorney Sean Gale have thrown their hats into the ring. A news release announcing Gale’s run-up said “the only way to victory” was with a pro-Trump candidate.
“President Trump is still very popular among Republicans,” said former GOP representative Lou Barletta, a top ally of Trump in the state. “There is no denying that the Republican Party in Pennsylvania is still a Trump party.”
Earlier this year, Steve Bannon, a former Trump White House chief strategist, told POLITICO that “every candidate who wants to win in Pennsylvania in 2022 must be a full Trump MAGA.”
Potential and declared Senate candidates claim local party leaders are best equipped to win Trump approval themselves.
With so many ties with the former president and his government, it is very hopeful that they will win his imprimatur. For example, Donald Trump Jr. tweeted in February, “My friend @SeanParnellUSA is a strong conservative America First and has my support for any office he decides to run for in 2022 !!!”
“If you talk to these people, everyone thinks they’ll have the former president’s support,” said Sam DeMarco, chairman of the Republican Party in western Pennsylvania, Allegheny County. “These people all believe that because there is a connection there, they can possibly get his approval.”
A similar Trump-centric dynamic is playing out in the 2020 government. Barletta is looking at the possibility of running for governor and has said he will make a decision within the next few weeks. In a recent poll by Susquehanna Polling & Research, a firm whose conservative groups included clients, Barletta was found with an early lead in the primary.
William McSwain, a former U.S. attorney under Trump, has taken steps to elect him governor. State Sen. Doug Mastriano, who visited Trump in the White House after the 2020 election and helped lead a trial on unfounded election fraud, is another possible contender.
And at least one potential government candidate has visited Trump at Mar-a-Lago, an assistant to the politician said: Representative Dan Meuser.
Pennsylvania’s midterm 2018 also revolved around Trump. After Barletta became one of the first elected officials to support Trump in 2016, Trump returned the favor and endorsed the Northeastern Pennsylvania politician early in the Senate preference, which he continued to win. Scott Wagner, a senator at the time who boasted in 2016 that he was going to buy 20,000 Trump signs, captured the government’s nomination that year.
Both candidates were defeated in the general election by double digits, prompting Republican votes to push for a larger tent approach. But it has not yet come into being. Instead, many GOP activists demanded more loyalty tests from Trump: Earlier this year, several provincial parties in Pennsylvania condemned Republican Senator Pat Toomey for voting to accuse Trump after the uprising at the Capitol.
However, amid some Republicans’ calls to avoid divisions ahead of the 2021 local elections and the following year, the state GOP refused to condemn Toomey and voted to punish him instead.
Some party officials argue that Republicans, with President Joe Biden in the White House, are quickly pushing their differences aside and that they will be united for the 2022 primary, regardless of which candidate catches the nomination and how closely they commit themselves to Trump.
“The media wants this to be the core of the campaign. I think the campaign is going to be much more than that, ”said Charlie Gerow, a GOP strategist in Pennsylvania. “The primary campaign is about individual candidates and their individual views for the country’s future and their individual capabilities.”
Yet, when he mentions a number of issues that are likely to dominate the race – China, immigration, Biden’s spending – it’s clear how much Trump is still influencing the party. And there is no doubt that GOP candidates will be scrutinized by party activists and operators over how closely they are joining the former president.
Nicholas, who spoke in his introductory video about Bartos ‘nod to Trump, said:’ What I took out of it was someone who said the minimum he needed to say about 45 so people didn’t have to think , ‘Why did you not mention? 45? ‘”
Bartor spokesman Conor McGuinness quickly backtracked, saying he included a mention of Trump in the spot “because no one has ever fought harder for the forgotten men and women of Pennsylvania than President Trump.”
“The only person who would produce it as a problem,” he added, “is a swampy DC consultant.”