By: Pete Bannan
Daily Times
March 13, 2024
Republican candidate for U.S. Senate Dave McCormick visited Swarthmore on Wednesday to meet supporters.
The Pennsylvania native was invited by the Philadelphia Log Cabin Republicans for a meet-and-greet at the Inn at Swarthmore.
McCormick is traveling across the state to meet with voters. His day on Wednesday began in Pittsburgh and ended in Bucks County.
“Our country is in trouble, going in the wrong direction,” McCormick told the two dozen attendees. “If you want to assure America remains the America we love, that we all benefited from, then you’ve got to get into the arena, and that’s why I’m running.”
He said that having lost the 2022 Senate primary to Dr. Mehmet Oz by less than a thousand votes of 1.5 million cast, he keeps getting drawn back to the belief that “America, it doesn’t keep going unless people choose to make it that way.”
“The decline is evident around us, economically you see it everywhere: $34 trillion, $1 trillion of interest payments … that is bigger than our defense budget,” he said. ”You see it with Bidenomics.”
He said for most people the economy isn’t getting better.
“Most people are living paycheck to paycheck,” he said. “Prices have gone up by 17%, real wages by 14% so if you are buying fuel or food or rent it’s gotten more expensive, not less.”
He called the border an absolute catastrophe, as well as crime and the crisis of fentanyl.
McCormick said the country has ceded the war on energy.
“We have the fourth largest gas reserves in the world. If we could unlock that energy supply, it would be an economic boom for all of Pennsylvania, not just the parts with the natural gas, the entire economy,” he said.
McCormick criticized President Joe Biden and U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, who he will be attempting to unseat, as trying to stop the consumption of fossil fuels, drive up prices and replace it with alternate sources whose hardware — lithium batteries and solar panels — often comes from China.
His bio
McCormick is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., with a mechanical engineering degree and became an Airborne Ranger, deploying into Iraq during the Gulf War.
As a captain, McCormick led a team of 130 soldiers in clearing minefields and destroying enemy munitions.
Five years of commissioned service earned him a Bronze Star.
McCormick earned a doctorate at Princeton then moved back to Pittsburgh where he led a successful tech startup.
He served as an undersecretary of Treasury and deputy national security adviser in the George W. Bush administration. He said he is worried world events may take the country in a bad direction.
McCormick said Bob Casey is a do-nothing senator who has accomplished no major legislation.
“This is a change election and a change election is when guys like me, who aren’t part of the system, or in public life beat guys like Bob Casey, who has been in the Senate 18 years and hasn’t done anything,” McCormick said.
McCormick said he has united the Republican Party, which will help him win by dedicating resources to the November election.
On abortion, McCormick said his views are more along the lines of Casey’s father, Bob Casey Sr., who supported limits to late-term abortion, but not outlawing it.
During a brief question period, a member of the Log Cabin Republicans thanked McCormick for his early support of gay marriage. Log Cabin Republicans is the nation’s largest Republican organization dedicated to representing LGBT conservatives and allies, it says of itself.
“I liked what he had to say: middle of the road moderate,” said Jeffrey Jones of Upper Darby. Jones is running as a write-in candidate for state representative in the 163rd district.
McCormick will be back in Delaware County on Thursday, meeting with local tradesmen and small business owners in Broomall.
