What we learned from the Pennsylvania primary election

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Last week we told you that Tuesday would bring answers.

Whoops.

We got some, but there’s one real big question we’re still waiting on: the GOP Senate primary.

Still, there were some clues to be gleaned from yesterday’s decisive Democratic Senate and GOP governor’s races, and even the Republican Senate cliff-hanger.

The Pennsylvania test of Donald Trump’s clout produced a messy result.

His endorsed Senate candidate Mehmet Oz was locked in an excruciatingly tight contest with David McCormick — despite Trump pouring energy into the contest with a rally, a robocall, a phone call into Oz’s closing campaign event, and an Election Day radio interview. Trump had slammed McCormick as a candidate of the establishment and “globalists,” but that wasn’t enough to crater him.

And while the Trump-endorsed gubernatorial candidate, State Sen. Doug Mastriano, won big, that result had little to do with the former president. Mastriano was well on his way to victory before Trump weighed in three days before the primary.

Still, even if Trump might not win decisively, Trumpism still dominated.

Almost every major candidate in both the Senate and gubernatorial races tried to align themselves with Trump — whether they were a clean fit or not.

It’s hard to imagine a successful Mastriano candidacy without Trump paving the way for someone like him. Oz played up his identity as a “conservative outsider” and rode Trump’s endorsement for all it was worth, despite his past breaks with conservative orthodoxy on issues like abortion and guns. McCormick, despite a background that looks like one of a classic Chamber of Commerce Republican, presented himself as an “America First” conservative.

And while Kathy Barnette fell short of the expectations raised by her late surge, she still won about 25% of the vote on a shoestring budget while running as probably the most authentically MAGA candidate in the field — potentially pulling support that might have gone to Oz.

Whatever Trump’s actual influence on votes — and if Oz pulls it out, even moving votes by a couple percentage points would prove decisive — it’s clear that his style of politics is still guiding GOP candidates.

In big, competitive elections, Democrats have so often gone for the conventional over the unorthodox: Joe Biden in 2020, Hillary Clinton in 2016, and that same year, the establishment-backed Senate candidate Katie McGinty over the defiant Joe Sestak and a small-city mayor with tattoos and a compelling story but little money named John Fetterman.

On Tuesday, the party flipped the script.

Fetterman, now the lieutenant governor, ran away with the Democratic nomination, easily defeating State Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta and U.S. Rep. Conor Lamb, the candidate who fit the conventional, middle-of-the-road Democratic profile.

And while you might not call the sitting LG an “outsider,” Fetterman is clearly different from most Democrats, and got a cold shoulder from most party insiders. After Trump remade the GOP to champion the white, working class, Democrats are hoping Fetterman, with his own populist approach, can win back those same voters, while also appealing to progressives.

“A typical Democrat, running a typical campaign, is going to struggle. To win PA in 2022, we’re gonna have to do things differently,” Fetterman wrote in an email to supporters moments after the race was called. “Dems cannot run the same playbook that has failed in years past.”

Pointing to the headwinds his party faces, Fetterman pledged to campaign hard in the places where Democrats have been routed recently.

“Look, I can win in places other Democrats can’t because I’m a different kind of Democrat,” he added.

Whether Fetterman faces off against Oz or McCormick, it’ll offer Democrats a chance to upend recent narratives pitting elitist liberals against populist conservatives. This time, they’ll have the candidate from the Rust Belt with the everyman touch — albeit with his own Harvard degree — running against a wealthy rival who has long run in elite coastal circles.

Democrats are eager to change sides in that argument.

“I have goose bumps right now.”

—Phil Heasley, 31, of Butler, a Fetterman campaign volunteer at his election-night party in Pittsburgh last night.

That’s it for this week. The voting is done even if the primary isn’t. Back next week with hopefully at least a little more clarity!