McCormick’s Friday decision comes more than two weeks after the May 17 primary ended with Oz winning by a margin of less than 1,000 votes out of more than 1.3 million cast in the Republican primary. The narrow margin triggered Pennsylvania’s automatic recount law, which takes effect when the margin between the top two finishers is 0.5 percentage point or less.
“We were so close,” McCormick told supporters, pointing to the “thin” margin.
“It’s now clear to me with the largely complete count that we have a nominee. And today I called Mehmet Oz to congratulate him on his win. And I told him, what I’ve always told them, that I’m going to do my part to try and bring the Republicans and Pennsylvanians behind his candidacy,” McCormick said.
The count began a week ago and counties had a Wednesday deadline to report their results. Attorneys for Oz and McCormick had fought county by county over provisional ballots.
McCormick’s campaign had also fought in court to have mail-in ballots without a handwritten date on the return envelope counted; Pennsylvania officials had said there were about 850 such ballots. A Pennsylvania judge sided with McCormick on Thursday and ordered counties to start counting those ballots, though the Republican National Committee had appealed that ruling on Friday. The RNC, the state Republican Party and Oz’s campaign had argued that those votes should not be counted.
Meanwhile, Trump had encouraged Oz to follow his own conspiracy tactics and declare victory. Oz referred to himself as the “presumptive” Republican candidate as the count unfolded.
When the ballots were counted, the margin did not change substantially in favor of McCormick. A source close to the McCormick campaign said it was clear the math was not there for the McCormick campaign and that McCormick would not get the votes needed to overtake Oz.
Oz was buoyed in the closing weeks of the open primary by the endorsement of Trump, who has been the biggest player in recent Senate primaries to replace retiring Republicans. The former president’s endorsement carried venture capitalist JD Vance to victory in Ohio and propelled US Rep. Ted Budd, who won handily in North Carolina.
The Pennsylvania race, like in Ohio, exposed fractures within the GOP, with Trump endorsing a candidate seen as more moderate than other contenders.
Kathy Barnette, the conservative commentator whose total acceptance of everything Trump stood for appealed to the former president’s supporters who were not enamored with Oz, finished in third place with about 25% of the vote. Barnette benefited from spending by the conservative Club for Growth, which was at odds with Trump for the second time in weeks after she spent millions supporting former state treasurer Josh Mandel, who finished second in the Ohio Senate primary.
Oz overcame attacks for his changes to abortion rights, which he once said he supported and now says he opposes, and his Turkish citizenship and his service in the Turkish military.
Meanwhile, McCormick was the beneficiary of more than $16 million in ad spending from a super PAC called Honor Pennsylvania, funded by Wall Street figures. His campaign and the Oz campaign also each spent more than $12 million on television ads.
Pennsylvania now heads into a November election that could be key to determining which party controls the Senate. The Commonwealth is also staging a crucial gubernatorial race pitting Republican state Sen. Doug Mastriano, who has embraced Trump’s lies about the 2020 presidential election, against Democratic Attorney General Josh Shapiro, who has defended Trump’s election procedures. state, with the winner gaining the power to appoint the secretary of state who will take control of Pennsylvania’s electoral machinery in time for the 2024 presidential contest.
This story has been updated with additional details on Friday.
CNN’s Kristen Holmes contributed to this report.
Reference-www.cnn.com