Pennsylvania Senate candidate Kathy Barnette says she "worked on Wall Street for many years." She's about 955 miles off.
Barnette, a conservative commentator, cited her experience on Wall Street in 2011 and 2020, and in an attack on Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign. "I worked 4 years on Wall Street. Would u invest money w/ someone who was filing bankruptcy?" she wrote of Trump's finances in 2016.
But Barnette's official résumé suggests she worked far from the domain of "bulls, bears, [and] people from Connecticut." She has held three jobs in the financial services industry, according to a now-deleted LinkedIn profile. She was an associate analyst at the Missouri-based A.G. Edwards from 1997 to 1999, and a financial equity analyst at "Banc of America Capital Management," her résumé says. She described the latter as a "major Wall Street firm" but worked for the company in St. Louis.
A Washington Free Beacon geographic analysis found that Wall Street is in New York City, not St. Louis. There is a Wall Street in the midwestern town, but it is largely residential.
The inconsistency emerges as Barnette faces other questions about her background. Barnette, whose surge in polls has caught opposing GOP campaigns by surprise, gave contradictory answers about whether she voted for Trump in the 2016 primary. She claimed this week she did, but said in her 2020 book, "I didn’t vote for Trump in the primaries." Barnette opposed Trump during much of the 2016 campaign, saying his moral character was "questionable," but said she joined the "Trump train" by the general election. Barnette insisted this week she voted for Trump in 2016, but the Pittsburgh-Post Gazette reported she did not cast a ballot in Pennsylvania until 2018.
Trump, who has endorsed celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz in the race, blasted Barnette on Thursday, saying she "will never be able to win the General Election against the Radical Left Democrats."
"She has many things in her past which have not been properly explained or vetted," Trump said.
Democrats are likely to seize on Barnette's extensive catalog of public statements on hot-button cultural issues. She has lamented the "Homosexual AGENDA" and called Islam "the enemy." "Pedophilia is a Cornerstone of Islam," she declared on social media in 2015.
Barnette has provided few details about other aspects of her background. She often cites her hardscrabble upbringing on an Alabama pig farm and her 10 years of service in the military. Barnette's campaign initially declined to provide her military records, going as far as hanging up on this reporter this week when asked for the documents. She later released records showing she served in the Army Reserves and Alabama National Guard. Barnette said Thursday she has documents showing her active duty service in the Army, though she did not commit to releasing them.