Will he or won’t he? A McCormick run in Pennsylvania would give GOP a marquee candidate
Salena Zito
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GETTYSBURG — Dave McCormick was having a time of it when he walked into a town hall he was hosting here in Adams County in March 2022. It was two months before the Republican primary for the U.S. Senate, former President Donald Trump had just endorsed celebrity Dr. Mehmet Oz, and conservative activist Kathy Barnette was gaining on him and Oz in the contentious contest.
When he entered the room, there were plenty of crossed arms, red MAGA hats, and a lot of skepticism. McCormick discussed inflation, the war in Ukraine, and the country’s relationship with China, and while his positions were pretty much in line with most of the audience, it wasn’t until he recalled the last time he had been in Gettysburg that he really connected with them over a sense of place and shared experiences.
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In the speech, McCormick recalled the time when he was still a young lieutenant in the 82nd
Airborne. As part of staff training exercises, a team of paratroopers would go across the country and jump in, walk a battlefield, and head back to Fort Bragg.
McCormick said his parents were living in Gettysburg then, and he explained he thought it would be a great opportunity for them to see him jump in person. He explained he told them he would be the first person out, which they saw — but also saw the jump go horribly wrong when his chute collapsed before their eyes when the person who jumped after him came out of the plane quickly, right on top of him.
McCormick said that, to his parents’ horror, they watched him freefall for two seconds before the chute finally caught the air. When he landed safely and walked over to them, they were in tears.
The mood in the room visibly changed, and by the end of the town hall, he had won them over. In large part, they said at the time they now understood the broadness of his Pennsylvania experiences and roots and that “he was one of us.”
McCormick would go on in the narrowest of races to lose the primary to Oz, thanks in large part to Trump’s antics in that primary, and Oz would then lose to John Fetterman in the general election last November.
In an interview from his home in Pittsburgh right after the primary last year, McCormick said he was already considering a run against Democratic Sen. Bob Casey in 2024, something that shook the Democratic establishment in Washington and here in Pennsylvania largely because Casey has not attracted an A-list candidate in his two prior reelection bids.
It also surprised Republicans here who have always yearned for an A-list candidate and a competitive race against Casey but had become resigned to the fact that Casey would continue to ride on his father’s conservative Democratic coattails even though Casey Jr. has been an unabashed liberal legislator for decades.
So here’s the question regarding McCormick: Is he or isn’t he running? He certainly seems to be. The Washington County native who grew up in Bloomsburg and left for the military and college only to come back to run a Pittsburgh-based high-tech company before heading back to Washington to serve in the George W. Bush administration has spent an inordinate amount of time in the state.
Most of those visits outside of his home have been under the auspices of promoting his book Super Power in Peril. However, just as many have been visiting, like spending the day at the Pennsylvania Farm Show or at the Lehigh Valley and Bethel Park GOP events, or at the Bucks County Days.
Currently, he is the only person considering a run for the party’s nomination for the U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania. State Sen. Doug Mastriano, last year’s Republican gubernatorial candidate, announced in the beginning of the summer he would not be seeking the seat, and neither Oz, Jeff Bartos, or Barnette have shown any interest in the race.
Certainly, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is laser-focused on McCormick in his effort to protect Casey. The DSCC, the campaign arm for Senate Democrats, sent a former 60 Minutes producer-turned-liberal activist and opposition researcher, Marley Klaus Dowling, to uncover anything she can to gather information from McCormick’s friends and colleagues across the country.
The Washington Free Beacon reported this week that in an effort to find out personal things about McCormick, Klaus Dowling has identified herself as a fact checker and reporter and tried to push the narrative that he was a right-wing MAGA extremist.
Casey, whose mother Ellen, the former first lady of Pennsylvania, died this week at the age of 91, has never faced a competitive challenger in his three election cycles. The Scranton Democrat and one-time centrist practiced law for four years before running for and winning the state auditor’s race, lost a gubernatorial primary to Ed Rendell, then ran and won for state treasurer before his first run for U.S. Senate in 2006 in massive pro-Democratic landslide victories nationwide.
If the showdown is between McCormick and Casey, it is likely to be the most expensive Senate race in the country.
McCormick, who declined to comment for the story, told the Philadelphia Inquirer earlier this month that he was “not in a rush” to declare his candidacy.
The 2024 cycle leans heavily in Republicans’ favor. Then again, so did 2022 before Trump got involved in the primary races, causing GOP losses in the seats they could have won with better candidates in Arizona, Georgia, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania, which gave the Democrats a 51-49 majority.
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There will be 34 Senate seats being decided in November 2024 — the Democrats have to defend 23 of them, the Republicans are defending 11 seats, with Democrats having eight that are considered highly competitive to defend.
The nonpartisan Cook Political Report shows that none of the Republican seats up for reelection are considered noncompetitive; currently, without the Republicans having a dog officially in the race, the Cook Political Report lists the race as “leans Democrat.”