SOUTHAMPTON, Pa. — As momentum lifts Republican candidate for U.S. Senate Kathy Barnette, there is also the swirling controversy and the questions about who she is — and about her role in attempting to overturn the 2020 election.
Barnette's sudden ascension has attracted the kind of scrutiny front-runners usually experience early in their campaigns, but it's coming less than one week before the May 17 primary. And what had been a race dominated by cardiothoracic surgeon and television personality Mehmet Oz and former hedge fund CEO Dave McCormick, has now, according to recent polling, become a three-person race in the most-watched primary in the country.
Party operatives and journalists are scrambling to understand a candidate who had been all but written off for her inability to fundraise the millions of dollars usually needed to win a statewide Senate seat. Key Republican politicians, from Donald Trump to Pat Toomey, have in recent days tried to warn GOP voters of the peril of nominating this relative unknown.
"Kathy Barnette will never be able to win the General Election against the Radical Left Democrats," Trump said in a statement Thursday. "She has many things in her past which have not been properly explained or vetted, but if she is able to do so, she will have a wonderful future in the Republican Party — and I will be behind her all the way... A vote for anyone else [but Oz] is a vote against Victory in the Fall!"
Staff from Barnette's campaign removed reporters from a Q&A event she hosted in Southampton, Bucks County,on Thursday night. But eventually reporters were allowed back in for a few minutes — and Barnette said Trump's comments were "favorable" of her.
"I look forward to working with the president," Barnette added.
For the brief time reporters were allowed in the event, Barnette told the crowd that the "long knives are coming out" against her, noting the several mainstream conservative voices who have rallied against her in recent days.
"I'm not backing down," Barnette added.
But while attention flocked to the multi-million dollar fight between Oz and McCormick over TV airwaves, Barnette has spent the last year building a grassroots movement of supporters and aligning herself with GOP gubernatorial candidate and front runner, state Sen. Doug Mastriano.
Despite her staunch support for Trump, she didn't vote in Pennsylvania in 2016, according to state voter records. Barnette registered to vote in Pennsylvania in August 2015, but didn't vote until 2018, according to voter rolls. She voted in both elections in 2018, 2020 and 2021 primary in the state.
When asked whether she voted in Pennsylvania in 2016 at Thursday's event, Barnette claimed she did. When the reporter followed up and asked why the voter roll said otherwise, Barnette doubled-down and said she voted here.
The political commentator and former Montgomery County congressional candidate paved a path for herself as one of the leading voices supporting Trump and his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
Like Mastriano, she chartered three buses to the "Stop the Steal" rally on Jan. 6, 2021, which infamously turned into a deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol. She expensed $3,600 to Perkiomen Motorcoach on Jan. 11, 2021 according to campaign finance records, and talked about her organizing efforts in YouTube videos.
"After we've done everything we know to do, stand. Do not roll over, do not play dead, do not stick your head in the sand," Barnette said in a YouTube video posted Dec. 31, 2020. "Stay engaged, fight. You and I don't have an 'America' to run off to."
On Dec. 30, 2020, Barnette wrote in a now-deleted tweet that the "only thing that will pop the bubbles of these dummy political consultants who are advising these Republicans ... is the VIGOROUS, MUSCULAR EXPRESSION OF THE POPULACE REVOLT represented by 75M+ Americans ... 40M of whom are CHRISTIANS!"'
But some of her more controversial tweets are still live on her Twitter.
In one tweet from March 2017, she argues that Islam should be banned from being practiced in the U.S. In others from 2015, she writes "We must understand the mentality of the enemy. The enemy is #Islam!" and "Pedophilia is a Cornerstone of Islam."
She's also made anti-gay comments on her radio show, such as that same-sex marriage is a "slippery slope" to accept incest and pedophilia, CNN reported.
"Two men sleeping together, two men holding hands, two men caressing, that is not normal," Barnette said on her radio show in July 2015, after gay marriage was legalized by the U.S. Supreme Court, according to the CNN report.
There have been other items in her background that have raised questions, too.
For example, Barnette says she is a 10-year veteran. She released documents that show she served in the U.S. Army Reserves for nearly eight years, not 10 as she claimed.
This is an exaggeration — not an outright lie — which is common among politicians seeking office. For example in this race, Oz frequently says he grew up in Pennsylvania "10 miles south" of Kennett Square, which is Delaware. Or McCormick previously claimed he created more than 1,000 jobs as a businessman in Pittsburgh. WESA found that his former company grew by 600 jobs while he was there, but it does not say where they were based.
Barnette's candidacy shot up in the midst of the leaked draft opinion about the landmark Roe v. Wade case. During a debate last week at Grove City College, Barnette said her mother had conceived her after being raped at age 11. Anwith her mom, telling their life stories growing up Black and poor in Alabama on a pig farm, has also gone viral on social media in recent days.
Barnette published a book in 2020 titled, "Nothing to Lose, Everything to Gain: Being Black and Conservative in America." In it, she writes about her life story, her support for Trump, and argues that liberal policies have stunted the growth of the Black community.
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(Staff writer Michael Wereschagin contributed.)
