Cheddar Politics speaks with Politico reporter Zach Montellaro --- who covers state elections -- about Pennsylvania, the biggest race in the Tuesday primaries. 

Cheddar Politics

Pennsylvania Primary Elections Critical to Senate Midterms

Welcome back to cheddar politics Tuesday was the biggest day for primaries so far this year and none of the states holding elections were more vital than of course, pennsylvania. We will break down the big takeaways from those races. So here to help us do so we have Zach Monteiro, the state politics reporter at politico and friend of Cheddar Zach, we're gonna have to have you on so much in the coming weeks. But I think we have to start with one of the biggest races of the night and certainly the biggest race still to be called the Senate GOP primary. We have the celebrity candidate, Dr Oz, endorsed by former celebrity himself and now former President donald trump and the more establishment but still kind of trump ish candidate David McCormick. They're so close to each other right right now. I think it's within 2000 votes and there's a bunch of mail in votes to be counted. You know, how many, I do not how many votes are left to be counted And do we have any idea how those outstanding votes might lean and how that might change what's happening in pennsylvania right now. Yes, it is close is probably an understatement. It's incredibly close. And when we don't have the exact number of ballots just this morning, the state's chief election officer said there's 50,000 outstanding votes that won't be all Republican votes. There was also a democratic primary, despite the fact that democratic primary wasn't that exciting. Also got a lot of votes. Most of those votes are likely male votes. So that would mean that's probably a pretty heavily Democratic group. So maybe, I don't know 20% 25% of those are republican votes. So not a lot of votes left to be counted. Uh you know, it's really anyone's ball game at this point because these votes, it's so hard to predict how republican voters are going to cast their ballots with mail votes in particular because of all the lies, frankly, that former president trump spread about them. That this election is almost assuredly heading to a runoff in pennsylvania or rather a recount in pennsylvania. You get a recount if point if the two candidates in 20.5% of each other, they will Almost assuredly be within .5% of each other. So we won't actually know the winner for a couple more weeks. So I do have to ask you one of the things about recounts that we've experienced in recent, you know, in the last election cycle, is that they don't tend to change the outcome like ever, but certainly not often. Is this just sort of a, you know, cover yourself situation for pennsylvania, Secretary of State, especially given all the eyes on pennsylvania? Or does this also I know it's the law, right, but does this also give more legitimacy to a group in this case? Republicans fighting about republican candidates that elections are not fraudulent or are we just gonna hear that every election is fraudulent if the person you like, doesn't win from now on. Yeah. To be clear, like what recounts should do is that they should confirm people's trust in elections. As you mentioned recounts almost never change the results. The only one that comes to mind was when now former Senator Al Franken was losing His initial bid in the mid 2000's going into trying to get the Senate and a recount had him overtaking his opponent, but that was only a couple 100 votes separating them, not a couple of 1000. What recounts should do is confirm that elections in America broadly or well run. It's not saying there's never any mistakes. It's not saying that there's literally zero fraud, but recount show over and over and over again that election officials generally do a good job counting officials are going to want to do it because it's in state law. Uh and it probably won't change former president trump's mind on his, on his beliefs, on the legitimacy of elections trump is wrong. American elections are safe and secure. But I don't think it will change his mind and I don't think it will change his supporters minds either. Do you ever feel like a broken record? Because I said, I feel like every time I do a live shot about election time, like it was safe, it was secure. It was the most safe and secure election in american history. Guys, please believe me and yet no one believes me or it feels like no one believes me. Yeah. You know, this is unfortunately going to be something that we're just talking about over and over and over again in elections as we go on throughout this year. American elections are broadly safe and secure. They broadly have little fraud, that's not zero, but there's little fraud, little especially widespread fraud american elections and there's few mistakes that's not saying mistakes don't happen. But they're very rare and they very rarely affect the outcome of elections, especially on the scale of a statewide contest. So you should feel pretty secure about american elections. How some people, especially the former president, talk about it is a different story. Okay, let's give the democrats some airtime because we get we get a lot of Republican time out of pennsylvania but dems had, you know, they had a night to and like you said, it was not as close but lieutenant governor John Fetterman did pull it out even though he was literally in the hospital receiving a pacemaker at the time of the election. So tell me what your takeaways are for the democrats in pennsylvania. Is this a sign that democrats could actually have a better generally a better night in pennsylvania with Federman and josh Shapiro, the current attorney general on the governor's ticket or is this kind of just really still a toss up in the Purple liest of purple States. Yeah, I think both contests are probably toss up the governor and the Senate race, despite the fact that republicans nominated a pretty extreme candidate for governor, but democrats are going to be broadly be pretty happy with their ticket. Uh Lieutenant governor Fetterman, like as you mentioned, despite literally being in the hospital is a strong candidate, he is more from a populist wing of the Democratic Party, He is not, he is not what you would call like a, you know, moderate democrat, you know, like the person he beat Conor lamb who is a member of Congress, who came into the wave in 2018. Federman is very populous and democrats, some democrats think that could really help them. It was a big win for progressive democrats getting Federman nominated and not only getting him nominated, but getting him nominated in such a convincing fashion. It was not really a close election, that's why it wasn't exciting, wasn't it was because federal kind of ran away with the primary vote there. And then the other side of the of the ticket is josh Shapiro who is going to be the gubernatorial nominee. He literally did not have any competition on Tuesday. He, there was no one else to vote for. Besides josh Shapiro, so he has spent the better part of his campaign kind of sitting back watching republicans attack each other and fundraising a lot of money. Shapiro has been a strong candidate in pennsylvania in the past, He runs, you know, typically runs ahead of whatever the presidential ticket has been in the past. So democrats are pretty excited about Shapiro and his chances, despite it being a pretty awful political environment for democrats this year. So zack, I'm absolutely out of time, but I appreciate your, your help and your understanding and I'm in shock and awe, always of how much you keep in that brain of yours when it comes to state politics. Thank you so much for joining us. We'll have you back on soon. Zak McSlarrow is the state politics reporter at politico. Thank you again.