Pennsylvania’s Nutty Senate Race
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Slate
3.9 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 12 April 2022
⏱️ 26 minutes
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Summary
Pennsylvania’s got a U.S. Senate seat up for grabs, and the primary is shaping up to be a showdown between moderate, establishment candidates and those on the fringes of each party.
Guest: Jonathan Tamari, national political writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Jonathan Tamari covers politics over at the Philadelphia Inquirer. |
| 0:10.3 | And here's how he knew 2022 was going to be busy for him. |
| 0:14.7 | A couple years back, he was driving all the way from the northwest corner of Pennsylvania to D.C. |
| 0:20.4 | When he got some news. |
| 0:22.0 | Republican Senator Pat Toomey was going to be retiring. |
| 0:25.6 | Well, this was in the middle of the presidential race, and it was stunning that he announced that early. |
| 0:44.1 | And fortunately, I was able to break that story, and I'm, like, sitting at a rest stop on the Pennsylvania turnpike. |
| 0:46.7 | And I'm tweeting and reporting. |
| 0:51.9 | And, you know, a Times reporter, quote, tweeted it and said, this is going to make a crazy Senate race. |
| 0:54.3 | And I was like, man, I'm just trying to survive 2020. |
| 0:57.8 | Can we not look ahead to 2022 right now? |
| 0:59.3 | This was like October 2020. |
| 1:00.5 | We had a month to go. |
| 1:11.7 | The reason this Senate race is so crazy has more to do with the state of Pennsylvania than anything else. |
| 1:15.4 | The Keystone State is considered a bellwether for a lot of communities. |
| 1:18.7 | It's got an East Coast urban core, that's Philly. |
| 1:22.3 | There's Pittsburgh, with its Midwestern Rust Belt vibe. |
| 1:24.7 | And some regions feel like Appalachia. |
| 1:30.3 | There's a part of Pennsylvania kind of south of Harrisburg that almost has a southern feel. It's like right over the Maryland panhandle. |
| 1:32.3 | It's a little America. |
| 1:33.3 | It is. |
| 1:34.3 | It is. |
... |
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