It’s still advantage Oz in the Pa’s Republican U.S. Senate primary, but McCormick hasn’t surrendered yet

David McCormick, left, and Mehmet Oz

Pennsylvania Republican candidates for U.S. Senate David McCormick, from left, and Mehmet Oz during campaign appearances in May 2022 in Pennsylvania.AP File Photos

It’s still advantage Dr. Oz, as the nation’s highest-profile, and closest, Republican Senate primary grinds toward its inevitable conclusion.

It’s not that anyone has declared victory or conceded defeat. On the contrary, The Associated Press reported Friday that both campaigns were spending Friday gearing up for an automatic recount triggered by the closeness of the margin between Mehmet Oz, the cardiac surgeon-turned-television personality, and his chief rival, former Wall Street executive David McCormick.

But the fact is, ongoing tabulations of mail-in ballots over the last two days have not significantly changed Oz’s lead, and at the pace things are going, McCormick’s going to run out of available votes before he catches up.

As of 6 p.m. Friday, the Pennsylvania Department of State’s running tally of the Republican Senate vote had Oz leading McCormick by 1.079 votes out of more than 1.3 million cast. The raw vote count was 418,470 votes for Oz, to 417,391, McCormick.

The problem for McCormick, said Philadelphia attorney Adam Bonin, is that every category of votes - mail-ins, absentees, provisionals - is split seven ways in this primary field, and the actual votes cast for Oz and McCormick has been super close across the board.

“So there’s going to be some wobbling in different directions as the count continues,” Bonin, who specializes in election law for Democratic candidates, said Friday. “But you’re not going to suddenly see one of these tranches of ballots come in, you know, with a huge lead for one of them. Statistically, that’s just not going to happen.”

There’s still that recount, to be sure. Pennsylvania triggers one in any statewide race where the margin between the top two finishers is 0.5 percent or less. Here, it’s actually less than 0.1 percent.

But Jonathan Marks, the state’s deputy secretary for elections and commissions, noted in an interview with PennLive Friday that of the three prior statewide races that have gone to an automatic recount, none has seen a change in the outcome.

To be sure, McCormick was not ready to concede.

The Associated Press reported Friday both campaigns already had dozens of lawyers and volunteers fanned out around the presidential battleground state as election workers and election boards toiled through the remaining ballots. In addition, they have now hired Washington-based lawyers to lead recount efforts.

And in one fresh glimmer of hope, McCormick campaign advisors pointed to a ruling by a federal appellate court Friday that ordered officials in Lehigh County to count mail-in ballots cast in a 2021 county judge race that were adjudged to be validly cast in all ways except that the voter had signed, but had not put a date, on the outer envelope.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals held the requirement in the 2019 amendment to Pennsylvania’s election code that mail-in ballots have a handwritten date on the return envelope fail under provisions of federal law that prohibit denying a person’s right to vote because of paperwork errors that are not material to determining whether someone is qualified to vote.

It was not immediately clear whether that ruling would be applied to this year’s primary - a State spokesman noted the Wolf Administration had supported counting the Lehigh ballots and said the department expects to issue a guidance to counties on the matter early next week - but McCormick aides said the campaign was already alerting county officials to that opinion and asking them to add their unsigned ballots back into the count.

It was also unclear Friday how many undated mail-ins ballots exist statewide, but in Allegheny County alone, county officials reported Friday that there were 218 of them across both parties. If that was representative of the state-as-a-whole, that could add 2,000 or more ballots back into the mix, which is exactly what the McCormick campaign wants to see.

McCormick has been running ahead of Oz in the mail-in count thus far, outpolling Oz by 32.1 percent to 23.1 percent in that category.

“You could have a couple thousand more ballots that - out of nowhere - counties are saying need to be opened,” Bonin said.

Still, the overall math was arguing late Friday that in one of the remaining categories - be that the remaining mail-in ballots, which State estimated at 8,300 as of 11 a.m. Friday; or what appear to be the much smaller universes of provisional ballots and votes from overseas civilians and military personnel - McCormick’s results are going to have to show one last, late upward trend to catch Oz.

State had registered some provisional ballot returns from 17 counties through Friday evening. In those early returns, Oz was actually up on McCormick, 116-95.

McCormick campaign sources, speaking on background, said they were cognizant of the daunting math, but there were no plans for McCormick to concede anytime before Tuesday, when all 67 counties are required to report their unofficial tallies to the Department of State, along with an accounting of what still needs to be counted.

Oz officials, meanwhile, did not respond to requests for comment for this report.

If the race does proceed to a recount - McCormick would have a chance to waive it - all the ballots would be recounted on different machinery than was used to count them on the first time around. The recount would have to be completed by June 7, Marks said.

But even there, Bonin said, there’s a huge edge to the candidate with the lead.

“Things will change during a recount. But the thing is once you get to a recount, you need everything to change in the same direction,” he explained.

.”There are going to be corrections in all sorts of directions, but absent problems in a particular county where one candidate has been stronger than the other or something like that, it’s not likely that they all go one in one way enough to matter.”

The eventual winner of the GOP race will advance into what is expected to be a hotly-contested and nationally-watched general election campaign against Pennsylvania’s Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, who easily won the Democratic Party nomination for the seat being relinquished by incumbent U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey.

Marks, at the Department of State, asked all sides - and voters - for patience. Even in the race proceeds to a recount, those results should be certified by June 7.

“The process in is in place to protect their rights as voters, and it’s in place to protect the rights of candidates involved in a tight race like this,” Marks told PennLive. “It seems long and arduous. People get impatient, they want to know the winner right away. But it’s important that we get it right. That it’s accurate. That is obviously the most important thing, and if that takes a little extra time to make sure we get it right, then so be it.”

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