The bigger they are, the harder they fall is the perfect way to describe Pennsylvania Senate Candidate Kathy Barnette. She came from nowhere and caught up to Dr Oz in the polls, now she is crashing down just as fast.
Let’s start with her complete misrepresentation of her mysterious “10 year service” in the US military.
According to Barnette’s website, “Kathy served her country proudly for 10 years in the Armed Forces Reserves where she was accepted into Officer Candidacy School.” The thing is, the “Armed Forces Reserves” isn’t an actual branch of anything. It would be the Army Reserves, Navy Reserves, Air Force Reserves, and so on.
Military.com says, “The Reserve components of the Armed Forces are: The Army National Guard of the United States, the Army Reserve, the Navy Reserve, the Marine Corps Reserve, the Air National Guard of the United States, the Air Force Reserve and the Coast Guard Reserve.”
In a 2017 radio interview, Barnette claimed hat she “served in the U.S. Army for the majority of my 10 years in the military.”
Despite the claims of 10 years of service, records released by the candidate to investigative reporter Gabe Kaminsky show that she only served in the Army National Guard from 1993-1998, and in the Army Reserve from 1998-2000, leaving 3 years of her claimed service in question.
Barnette’s campaign released a statement on the discrepancies, saying,
“Kathy J. Barnette served in the Alabama Army National Guard from September 1993 to March 1998. Her primary military occupational specialty was 63S, Heavy-Wheeled Vehicle Mechanic, and she attained the rank of specialist. Her last unit with the ARNG was the 778th Maintenance Company, Alabama Army National Guard,” spokesperson Madison Bonzo said in the official statement. “Kathy J. Barnette also served in the Army Reserve as a Human Resource Specialist (71L/42A) from 1998 to 2000.”
Barnette herself has also fired back at the attacks against her for not releasing all of her documents.
“I’m up in Elk County, and these people don’t live here and they don’t know how difficult it is to get a service up in Elk County. I don’t walk around with my military records in my back pocket,” the candidate explained.
She goes on to explain that the reporter asking her took that as her saying the documents didn’t exist, hung up the phone, and wrote a dishonest account of their conversation.
The military document controversey comes on the heels of another controversy surrounding a series of extremely anti-Islamic and anti-gay tweets posted on Barnette’s page, including the claim that “pedophilia is the cornerstone of Islam.”
Her response when asked about the offensive tweets was even more telling, simply claiming, “I don’t think that’s me.”
As of last week, she was 3rd place in a neck-in-neck race for US Senate. Her opponent, Mehmet Oz, has received the backing of President Trump. Do you think there is any chance she will survive these new controversies or is this the end of her short political stardom?
