Pete Helms holds his annual ice fishing party at a hunting club that’s so deep in Pike County, its address doesn’t even register on Google Maps. To get there, you just have to know it’s a half-mile down a wooded, windy road from the Hammered Steel Tavern.
It may seem an unlikely place for a U.S. Senate candidate to sell himself to voters just weeks before the May 17 primary election. Even more surprising? Two at once.
But on Thursday, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee stood in front of a fireplace inside the Tall Oaks Hunting Club to talk about his support for David McCormick, a former hedge fund CEO and one of the front-runners in Pennsylvania’s Republican primary.
As he looked over a sea of hundreds sipping crafting beer, Mehmet Oz — the celebrity surgeon and the other front-runner — sat at the end of a wooden table, listening intently and eating pierogi off a paper plate.
“I’m running because I think the country is headed in the wrong direction,” McCormick told the crowd, “and the weakness and wokeness is taking us in a place we won’t recognize.”
He wrapped up his brief remarks, and Helms took the mic: “Before everybody leaves,” he said, “we have another friend of ours here. Dr. Oz, do you want to come up and say a few words?”
“This is like a debate stage,” Oz joked.
He leaned into thorny cultural issues and said he’d be the one to fight for conservative values, saying “for too long, Republicans have walked into the culture war knife fight with neatly arranged three-by-five index cards.”
It’s not common for candidates for statewide office to run into one another on the trail, outside of debates (though the two didn’t appear to interact). Campaigns have a lot of ground to cover, and Pennsylvania’s Senate race is one of the most closely watched in the nation.
But on Thursday afternoon, instead of a hunting club at the end of a windy road, Helms’ 50th annual ice fishing party felt like the center of the Republican political universe in Pennsylvania.
‘The political event of the year’
The event started decades ago with a few guys who went ice fishing in February in Lake Wallenpaupack. Now, few bother with the fishing part. It’s evolved into a meet-and-greet where some of northeast Pennsylvania’s most well-known people in business and politics gather to bump elbows.
There was Lou Barletta, the former congressman and a front-runner in the Republican primary for governor, who scarfed down a burger and then entered the room to chants of “Louuuuuuu!” State Sen. Mario Scavello, R., Monroe, was there, and State Rep. Jonathan Fritz, R., Susquehanna, darted around, introducing friends to one another.
“This is not a political event,” said State Sen. Lisa Baker, a Luzerne County Republican up for reelection this year, “but it’s the political event of the year.”
Don Sherwood, who represented parts of northeast Pennsylvania in Congress in the 2000s, said he firmly supports McCormick because he’s “revered” in the Bloomsburg area. McCormick graduated from Bloomsburg High School, then went to West Point and spent much of his adult life outside Pennsylvania.
His opponents have attacked him repeatedly for his residency, pointing out that he only recently bought a house outside Pittsburgh. But Sherwood, 81, who lives in Tunkhannock, Wyoming County, said McCormick’s family is known in the area.
As for Oz?
“He’s changed his position so much, he sounds disingenuous,” Sherwood said.
What voters think
This pocket of Pennsylvania, like every other, has been blanketed with television ads bankrolled by Oz and McCormick, who are each spending millions of their personal fortunes. Some of the most memorable commercials, voters at the fishing event said, attacked Oz for his seemingly shifting positions on issues such as abortion and guns.
Oz said Thursday he was confident in his reception, saying “everyone is really happy the president endorsed me.”
But for some, the backing of former President Donald Trump is more of a liability.
“I’m looking for confidence and a new way forward, and I think we need to realign,” said Will Clauss, a real estate agent who lives in the area. Another voter, Jack Lennox, 59, added, “That’s kinda why I like McCormick. He doesn’t hitch his horse to another guy’s wagon.”
By the end of the event and after meeting both candidates, Clauss, 37, said he remains undecided. He said he’s keeping an open mind because he takes his vote seriously.
“We’re in a deep red county,” he said, “and typically the winner of our primary is who takes it.”
