Republican losses in Pennsylvania's races, including in the key race for the U.S. Senate, came with Democrat gubernatorial candidate Josh Shapiro taking large numbers from deep red areas after GOP Candidate Doug Mastriano "grossly underperformed expectations," Rep. Guy Reschenthaler told Newsmax on Wednesday.
"I'm shocked. I'm disappointed," said the Pennsylvania Republican on Newsmax's "Wake Up America," where on Tuesday he'd predicted Oz would win over Senate-elect John Fetterman by 3% of the vote.
Oz performed well, said Reschenthaler, but with Shapiro siphoning off votes, that not only was bad news for Oz, but for the congressional seats Republicans had thought they were picking up.
"We thought we were going to have three pickups in Pennsylvania, but the headwinds at the top just didn't get us over," said Reschenthaler.
He added that he thought that Fetterman, who suffered a stroke in May, conducted a "disingenuous" campaign, "much like Biden hiding in the basement, and not putting himself out there."
Pollster Jim McLaughlin, also on the show segment, said he believes voters in Pennsylvania and across the country were done a "disservice" by politicians who refused debates. However, he said that "casual voters" still picked those candidates, even though they did not know their stances on the issues.
"They wanted to make these campaigns about personalities and not about issues because they knew the Republicans had the advantage on most of the issues, especially with the candidate like Fetterman, who was really out of touch on a lot of the most important issues in Pennsylvania," McLaughlin said.
McLaughlin, who was the pollster for former President Donald Trump's 2020 campaign, also said Republicans must start doing a better job with early voting.
"Florida does early voting in person and by mail, and on Election Day, the Republicans outnumbered the Democrats by 321,000 votes in Florida," he said. "They've got the tactics down. If these are going to be the rules, the Republicans have to learn how to play by those rules across the country."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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