McCormick hits the mat with first ad in Pennsylvania Senate race
By Hans Nichols
Axios
March 26, 2024
Republican David McCormick is launching one of the first general election Senate ads of 2024, with a biographical spot that focuses on the glory and grit of high school wrestling in Pennsylvania.
Why it matters: McCormick — who was pilloried by his 2022 GOP primary opponent for having been CEO of Connecticut-based Bridgewater Associates, one of the world’s largest hedge funds — is spending early to tell his Pennsylvania story on his terms.
- McCormick hopes to draw on his years as a high school competitor — which helped propel him to West Point — to avoid getting pinned down as a Connecticut carpetbagger by Sen. Bob Casey (D-Penn.), who’s seeking his fourth term.
- “Pennsylvania wrestling taught me to do the hard thing: Hard work. Hard choices,” McCormick tells the camera, with cut-away shots to newspaper clippings of his high school triumphs.
- “That’s not what we get from Washington. The career politicians don’t do the hard work.”
The ad is part of a seven-figure buy that will run across Pennsylvania and include spots during the NCAA basketball tournament, according to a McCormick campaign adviser.
Zoom in: McCormick lost a vicious GOP primary in 2022 to Trump-backed Mehmet Oz, who went on to lose to Sen. John Fetterman (D-Penn.).
- This time Republicans have cleared the field for McCormick, allowing him to square off with Casey months ahead of the Nov. 5 election.
- McCormick is one of the GOP’s best-capitalized challengers. His campaign and related committees raised $5.4 million last quarter and McCormick kicked in another $1 million of his own money.
- A super PAC supporting him, with big Wall Street names including Steve Schwarzman and Ken Griffin, has raised $18 million.
- Casey raised $3.6 million in the fourth quarter of 2023. He is criss-crossing the state, picking up endorsements and hitting McCormick for his old investment firm’s ties to China.
Zoom out: Pennsylvania is one of several Senate races that will determine whether Republicans take control of the chamber from Democrats, who now have a slim majority.
- In the last two presidential cycles, Senate races have closely tracked the presidential contest. That dynamic, if it holds, will tie McCormick’s fate to former President Trump’s.
- A CNN poll released last week had Trump and President Biden tied at 46% in Pennsylvania.
- Earlier this month, a survey from Emerson College Polling/The Hill had Casey up 45-41, with 14% undecided.
The bottom line: Pennsylvania’s Senate race — with two big media markets (Philadelphia, Pittsburgh) running ads and the Biden-Trump rematch as a backdrop — will be among the most expensive in the country.
- It’s likely to be a political wrestling match.
- And as McCormick says in his ad: “On the wrestling mat, there’s no place to hide.”