The Trump impact

Garrity, a self-described ally of Donald Trump, was endorsed by the president in January. Garrity told attendees at a fundraiser in February that she had to answer a single question from the president before he gave her his endorsement, as reported by Jaxon White for WITF.

Garrity and the White House have since declined WITF’s requests for information about the content of the question or her answer, but Garrity had previously joined some other Republicans in casting doubt on the results of the 2020 election, which Joe Biden won. She has since publicly backed away from those comments.

Last month, Trump invited Garrity to the White House for an in-person endorsement in the Oval Office, during which he called her “a spectacular person.”

Democrats, like Carroll, have criticized her closeness to the president, whose popularity has dropped significantly during his second term.

“The writing is on the wall,” Carroll said. “The Republicans are on their last leg and they are desperately trying anything that they have in their arsenal to hold onto power. The thing is they have not made life more affordable. That was a promise from them. They have not delivered for working families. That was a promise from them.”

However, Trump’s endorsement is helping some residents, like Sean Hunt, make a decision in the race.

“I know President Trump. I’m very familiar with his policies, and most of them are working very well, and she supports most of them,” Hunt said at the Port Richmond event. “So it would just be good to put somebody who he backs, who’s going to carry out his agenda, at the state level.”

Hunt, a military contractor who recently retired from the Air Force, characterized the race as “capitalism versus socialism” and said he went from being an independent voter to registering as a Republican after Trump became president.

“I just like his style,” he said. “He explains things very clearly, breaks it down to where anybody, if you just listen to what he’s saying with all his business experience and wisdom, makes it very easy to understand.”