David McCormick officially launches his second run for Senate

PITTSBURGH — David McCormick pitched himself to a crowd here Thursday as a returned son of Allegheny County, slamming leadership in Washington and characterizing his Senate run against a longtime incumbent as a fight against the status quo.

“Under Joe Biden and Bob Casey, what’s supposed to be up is down and what’s supposed to be down is up,” McCormick said from the top floor of the Heinz History Center museum, with American and Pennsylvania flags draped on the walls.

“We can do better. We cannot lose our country. We cannot lose our culture. We must not accept the status quo.”

McCormick, 57, a former hedge fund executive who lost a grueling and expensive primary to celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz last year, enters the race with more robust GOP backing but similar challenges to his last run.

He hopes to unseat Casey, who has been in the Senate since 2006 and held statewide public office for the last 26 years. The race is expected to be one of the most closely watched in 2024 with control of the chamber again hanging in the balance.

In his launch speech, McCormick called his opponent “a nice guy but not a leader,” and a “rubber stamp who’s been around too long.”

McCormick has no primary challengers so far and the bulk of the Pennsylvania Republican Party united behind him. The audience of several hundred on Thursday included grassroots activists who backed his last run as well as rank-and-file party members, GOP operatives, and elected officials from around the state, particularly Western Pennsylvania.

Shortly before McCormick’s announcement, the campaign announced endorsements from all eight Republicans who represent Pennsylvania in Congress, a group that includes the party’s lone representative from the Southeast, U.S. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R., Bucks) as well as Freedom Caucus leader Scott Perry (R., York). Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, (R., Kentucky), has indicated McConnell’s super PAC will help boost McCormick’s run.

Perry’s endorsement signals the inroads McCormick, whose wife worked for former President Donald Trump’s administration, has made with the more Trump-aligned wing of the party.

State Sen. Doug Mastriano, who had considered a Senate run after losing the governor’s race last year, gave a very near endorsement of McCormick in a Monday interview with Real America’s Voice:

“It’s time to unify,” Mastriano said. “If he’s our nominee, I’m backing him.”

A West Point graduate who served in Iraq during the first Gulf War, McCormick served in President George W. Bush’s administration before leading the world’s largest hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates.

Democrats have been on the offensive against McCormick all summer, criticizing his past comments on China, his stance on abortion, and his Pennsylvania bona fides. As he launched his campaign, the state party called him “a Wall Street Mega-Millionaire Who is Lying About Living in Pennsylvania” in a press release.

Lt. Gov. Austin Davis posted a video on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, welcoming McCormick to Pittsburgh with a map and guidebook. “We know he’s not from here. He doesn’t live here and he might need some help getting around,” Davis said.

McCormick moved from Connecticut to Pennsylvania to run in the 2022 Republican primary and bought a $2.8 million five-bedroom, seven-bathroom home in Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill neighborhood. But he still rents a $16 million mansion in Westport, Conn., which the Associated Press reported McCormick listed as his address as recently as March. The story prompted attacks that McCormick had lied about his residency from Democrats eager to repeat an offensive that worked well against Oz last year. On the day of McCormick’s announcement, Vanity Fair published a story charting his frequent private plane travel between Connecticut and Pennsylvania.

A large part of McCormick’s launch speech was reclaiming his narrative as a son of Pennsylvania. He was born in Washington, Pa., and grew up in the Pittsburgh area. He went to high school in Bloomsburg in Northeast Pennsylvania, where his father was a past president of Bloomsburg University.

He described himself to the crowd as “Pennsylvania first,” shouting out Bloomsburg High Panthers in the crowd and his parents, who both worked as teachers. His father, James McCormick, was chancellor of the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education and McCormick is the seventh generation of his family born in the state.

If McCormick’s primary runway remains clear of a serious challenger, he can focus immediately on Casey, the longest-serving Democratic senator from Pennsylvania, who has consistently over-performed Democrats in the state.

McCormick largely criticized Casey via Biden, calling Casey “part of the problem,” and noting that when he started in public office “Macarena” was a No. 1 song and former Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger was in middle school. “Bob Casey is not gonna change Washington,” McCormick said. “Bob Casey is Washington.”

But Casey is also a household name in Pennsylvania; his father is a former governor. Democrats say he will be a formidable incumbent to beat. “Sen. Casey has consistently stood up for working families and has played a crucial role in securing billions of dollars in infrastructure investments for Pennsylvania,” Pennsylvania Democratic Party Chair Sharif Street said ahead of McCormick’s launch.

A McCormick vs. Casey general election matchup would likely bring a more mild-mannered demeanor to the Senate campaign trail, which last year featured Oz, a longtime television personality, and Sen. John Fetterman, whose stroke and unconventional campaign style defined the race.

But it’s also a race that coincides with a presidential election in a key swing-state, setting it up to be a lively — and expensive — campaign.

At the campaign launch attendees waved red “Dave” signs and miniature Pennsylvania flags.

Maureen Malick, vice chair of the Republican committee in Robinson Township in Allegheny County, backed McCormick last time and is with him again. “He’s the right person for this moment,” she said. “He’ll ruffle some feathers and we need that.”

Marc Rudov, a branding adviser who backed Oz in the 2022 primary, said he thought McCormick’s launch speech “knocked it out of the park,” though he also thinks McCormick will face some obstacles selling his tough-on-China platform given Bridgewater’s extensive business dealings with China.

“What he has to sell is that Pennsylvania is going hard left,” Rudov said. “And he can do something about that.”