Oz, best known as the host of daytime TV’s “The Dr. Oz Show,” has battled misgivings among conservative groups about his positions on guns, abortion and other core conservative issues. Oz countered that Trump’s endorsement guaranteed that he was a conservative.
Heart surgeon-turned-TV celebrity Dr. Mehmet Oz and former hedge fund CEO David McCormick went into Wednesday essentially tied in Pennsylvania’s hotly contested Republican nomination for an open U.S. Senate seat, expected to be among the nation’s most competitive races in the fall, AP reports.
The contest was within a couple thousand votes overnight, out of more than 1.2 million cast. Trailing in a distant third place in the seven-person GOP primary field was conservative activist Kathy Barnette.
The Associated Press has not called the race. Some counties had yet to tabulate all of their mail-in ballots and the counting of provisional, overseas and military absentee ballots could last all week.
There is no runoff law in Pennsylvania. But the race was close enough to trigger Pennsylvania’s automatic recount law, with the separation between Oz and McCormick inside the 0.5% margin that prompts an order by the state’s top election official.
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