While a Senate race in a key swing state is never an easy proposition, the Democratic Party in Pennsylvania had some advantages going into the 2022 election.
First, the opposition was Dr. Mehmet Oz, who had weak ties to the state. Second, Dr. Oz was generally viewed as an elitist with no ties to the common man. Third, Dr. Oz had some foreign entanglements that were placed under strict scrutiny. Finally, the issue of abortion allowed a sharp contrast, with voters on the side of the Democratic Party.
These factors led to a 5-point win for John Fetterman even as the polls favored Dr. Oz near the end of the campaign.
What do Mehmet Oz and Dave McCormick have in common? They share the exact same vulnerabilities! That is why the 2022 Democratic Party playbook is being dusted off and used by Sen. Bob Casey in the fight to retain his Senate seat.
The question is whether or not this playbook will work on the 2024 electorate.
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Bob Casey, Jr. for PA-SEN
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What’s the Big Idea?
THIS STATE LEANS DEMOCRATIC, with an R+2 PVI
PA-SEN results for 2022. This is our coalition.
Pennsylvania is described as being part of the “blue wall” of swing states that Democratic candidates must win in order to win the presidential election. Until Trump cracked the blue wall in 2016, Pennsylvania was choosing the Democratic Party consistently albeit narrowly since 1992. President Joe Biden re-formed the blue wall in 2020.
This Senate seat was once held by the repugnant Sen. Rick Santorum. Santorum won amidst the 1994 Republican Revolution and held the seat for 12 years. The 2006 blue wave election was a bridge too far for him, as Bob Casey walloped the incumbent amidst the backlash to GW Bush.
Sen. Bob Casey has been a more moderate voice in the Senate caucus. He outran Obama in 2012 and had an easy time during the 2018 blue-wave election as well. Casey has never shared the ballot with Donald Trump, which is why I caution those who think the incumbent is on a glide path to winning re-election.
Don’t be fooled by the polls. Pennsylvania is a sharply divided state and this has the potential to be a very close race. Sen. John Fetterman won his race by a 51.2% to 46.3% margin in 2022. Needless to say, Casey’s coalition will be similar to the one Biden put together to win the state in 2020 and Fetterman used to win the other Senate seat in 2022.
Here’s where this Pennsylvania race will be won.
Democratic strategist James Carville once said that Pennsylvania is “Philadelphia in the east, Pittsburgh in the west, and Alabama in the middle”. The map above shows this clearly.
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Pittsburgh Metro Area: This is one of the Democratic anchors of the state, and it is the critical one out west. Casey will need upwards of 60% of the vote in this county to win statewide, and likely a bit more as a cushion.
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Philadelphia Metro Area: This metro area is the other Democratic anchor in the state, and it spans five counties (Bucks, Montgomery, Chester, Delaware, and Philadelphia). Casey needs to run up the score in the metro area to defeat the “Alabama in the middle”.
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Lehigh and Wyoming Valleys: The eastern and northeastern sections of Pennsylvania are part of the Rust Belt. Allentown/Bethlehem and Wilkes-Barre/Scranton are key components to our statewide coalition, but they trended towards the GOP in the era of Trump. If anyone can overperform expectations here, it is Casey. He needs to win these areas to win statewide.
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Penn State, Harrisburg, and Erie: Some parts of the middle actually vote for Democratic candidates despite Carville’s remark. All three cities vote nearly 50-50, and it will be important for Casey to use his moderate persona to win these areas.
Here’s where we need to keep the margins down, or we lose.
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Central Pennsylvania: There’s not much to like in central Pennsylvania in terms of Democratic precincts. The area is much like Alabama politically, and it is the strongest place in terms of GOP vote in the state. Casey must limit the margins as much as possible in order to win the state. He may find unlikely voters here, as Dave McCormick is a terrible fit as an elitist.
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Southwestern Pennsylvania: This part of the state used to be a Democratic bastion much like West Virginia in the days of coal mining and union strength. Those days are gone now, and this section of the state regularly votes for the GOP in statewide and federal elections. Even as Casey has a strong brand statewide, I doubt it will make much of a dent. But any extra margin helps!
- York and Lancaster Counties: These two counties are very slowly trending in our direction as they become bedroom communities for both Baltimore and Philadelphia, but that political transformation hasn’t happened yet. Casey will do well in the cities of York and Lancaster, but once you get outside the cities, the precincts turn beet red very quickly.
Sen. Bob Casey: A DOwn-to-Earth Political Scion
Sen. Bob Casey, Jr. is the son of a former governor of the state of Pennsylvania.
Sen. Bob Casey, Jr. was born in 1960 in Scranton, PA. His father was the governor of Pennsylvania from 1987 to 1995. He was educated at the College of the Holy Cross and later received his JD from the Catholic University of America. He’d spend a year volunteering with the Jesuit Volnbteer Corps and another year teaching 5th grade, but none of those career options stuck. Casey would wind up practicing law in Scranton while his father was the governor.
The son would eventually follow in his father’s footsteps and run for political office. Casey, Jr. ran for State Auditor General in 1996. After a very narrow primary win, he would go on to win the general election that year. Casey was re-elected in 2000 to the same role. In a PoliticsPA article, he was branded as “Most Likely to Succeed”.
In 2002, the son of a former governor truly wanted to take on the role of his father. Casey would run for governor in the primary and face off against Philadelphia Mayor Ed Rendell. It was a nasty primary election with the state party squarely behind Casey. That wasn’t enough to secure the nomination though, as Rendell would use the growing influence of southeastern Pennsylvania to eke out a win. Casey would take a consolation prize of State Treasurer in 2004 when he was termed out of his role as Auditor General.
Bob Casey, Jr. would make his big career move in 2006 when he was personally recruited by Sen. Harry Reid to run for the Senate seat occupied by Sen. Rick Santorum. He accepted, launching his fifth statewide campaign in nine years. He faced nominal primary opposition due to his socially conservative views. It was a good choice, as he walloped the incumbent 59%-41% in the 2006 blue wave election. Casey would go on to be re-elected in 2012 and 2018 to become the first Democratic incumbent to serve three terms as Senator in state history.
Casey is a moderate, both in temperament and in policy positions. He has evolved on many positions over time as the Democratic Party changes to attract more socially liberal voters and shed working-class socially conservative ones. For instance, he only came out as officially pro-choice in 2022. Another example is that he didn’t actively promote gun safety measures until after Sandy Hook. He still has some positions that frustrate progressives such as blocking a ban on fracking - a critical industry in his state.
Casey is the strongest when it comes to lunch-pail economic issues. He has been adamant about protecting the pensions and health benefits of former coal miners to the point of threatening key spending bills unless his proposals passed. In 2019, he proposed a bill to fund these items on a permanent basis. He rejected the Trump Tax Scam in 2017, saying that it was a giveaway for the super-rich and did nothing for workers.
Currently, Casey is pushing two pieces of legislation meant to combat inflation: one is the Shrinkflation Protection Act, which would prevent companies from selling smaller sizes of product without lowering prices. The other bill is the Price Gouging Prevention Act, which would empower the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general to take action against "grossly excessive price increases.”
Given his evolution on social issues and his strength on economic issues, it is vital that we re-elect Sen. Bob Casey, Jr.
Dave McCormick: An Out-of-Touch Elitist
A man of the people? HARDLY! Dave McCormick is Romney 2.0 without any of the redeeming qualities.
Dave McCormick was born in southwestern Pennsylvania in 1965. His father was the President of Bloomsburg University, giving him a relatively privileged upbringing. He would turn those connections into a stint at West Point where he studied mechanical engineering and starred on the wrestling team.
McCormick served as an Army Ranger during the Gulf War where he was a combat engineer. Once out of the Army, he earned his PhD in international relations from Princeton University. This opened the doors to a private sector stint at McKinsey & Co. He would join FreeMarkets in 1999 and become its CEO. The company was successfully sold to Ariba in 2002 and he became president of that larger corporation until 2004.
That year, McCormick joined the GW Bush administration in the Commerce Department. He was responsible for export controls and the framework that became the India-US Civil Nuclear Agreement. He eventually transferred to the Treasury Department where he was the top international diplomat for the department. He was involved with the international response to the Great Recession as well.
After his stint in D.C., he joined Bridgewater Associates, one of the largest investment management firms in the world, as president. He would rise to co-CEO in 2017 and sole CEO in 2019. He was in contention for many roles in the Trump administration but he declined them all. He was named to an advisory committee to the Department of Defense but was purged by Trump in late 2020.
McCormick was one of the leading candidates for the Pennsylvania Senate race in 2022, along with Dr. Mehmet Oz. The primary was exceedingly nasty, and McCormick doubted Oz’s ability to win the race. Trump would go on to endorse Oz because McCormick refused to state that the 2020 election was stolen. Thanks to Trump's endorsement, Oz would very narrowly win the GOP nomination. Oz would go on to lose to John Fetterman as stated above. McCormick became the frontrunner for the 2024 race and had no opposition during the primary.
It is McCormick’s tenure as a CEO and devotion to free trade and laissez-faire economics that paints him as an out-of-touch elitist. For instance, he claims to have created hundreds of jobs in Pennsylvania during his days at FreeMarkets. Instead, he pocketed state money and shed jobs in the state instead. Instead of protecting American jobs, the company outsourced them to India.
This is how much McCormick cares about the lives he destroyed while on his outsourcing binge…
His time at Bridgewater Associates followed much the same pattern. The company invested in China’s defense and other critical industries during his tenure as CEO. This includes the main supplier of fentanyl in China. The company also took tax credits from Connecticut and other states and laid off or outsourced workers anyway.
Speaking of Connecticut, he owns a mansion in Westport, and it is also where his children from a previous marriage go to school. McCormick himself spent the majority of his time in Connecticut prior to running for the Senate in 2022. He owned a $13M condo in Manhattan and another mansion in Fairfield, CT before selling them to buy a house in Pennsylvania to establish residency. He still owns between $24M-$120M in numerous properties and condos across America.
He is still earning money from government bonds and other income from the state of Connecticut, as an amended financial disclosure form states. He only started getting investments that are Pennsylvania-related in 2022, right when he started his first Senate campaign. Maybe he was a bit gun-shy about investing in Pennsylvania, given that his company bungled the pensions of teachers and other government workers in the state while collecting exorbitant fees.
His current wife is Dina Powell, who is an executive at Goldman Sachs and also a former Deputy National Security Advisor under Trump. She now sits on many boards, including the board of Exxon. That led to this irrelevant soundbite where McCormick’s response to complaints about high gas prices was to refer to his wife’s positions of privilege.
We haven’t even reached his new political positions yet. The old Dave McCormick was a patrician politically, supporting socially liberal causes such as immigration reform and LGBTQ+ rights. He even supported gender transition surgery as CEO of Bridgewater Associates. All of those stances have been jettisoned in favor of MAGA stances on social issues.
It’s clear that Dave McCormick is an out-of-touch elitist pretending to care about the common man in order to win an election in a state he doesn’t even live in.
How Can You Help?
Sen. Bob Casey, Jr. is going to face a torrent of political advertising during the election season. McCormick’s rich allies have already given a Super PAC affiliated with him $18M, with more on the way. It is planning on a $30M ad blitz to ultimately defeat the incumbent. Casey will have to rely on donations and Super PACs affiliated with the Senate Democrats to counter this gargantuan amount.
The ad war is already heating up, with Casey already going for the jugular when it comes to McCormick’s ties to China. Expect many more of these types of ads about McCormick’s business career to be highlighted.
Casey’s volunteering page takes you directly to the Pennsylvania Democratic Party’s HUGE database of volunteering opportunities in the state. It seems that each county has their own events ranging from manning booths at fairs to voter outreach to knocking on doors. There’s just simply too many events to link to or list here. If you live in the state or nearby, I’d recommend seeing what is available in your general location.
There is one virtual event affiliated with phone banking that is recurring. Defend Our Democracy is running a voter protection phone banking operation in the state. This effort ensures that everyone has a vote and a voice in the general election. There is a shift today between 1-3PM EDT and another one tomorrow between 6-8PM EDT.
Dave McCormick has a similar profile to Mehmet Oz, which is why the 2022 playbook is being dusted off by the Democratic Party. He has weak ties to Pennsylvania and is another rich person trying to buy his way into the Senate. If he was running a decade ago, McCormick would have the potential of being another Mitt Romney in the Senate. But every member of the GOP must run as a MAGA in order to kiss the ring of Trump, and McCormick is no exception.
I rate Sen. Bob Casey as the 8th most likely Senate seat to flip and the easiest of the “blue wall” Senate seats to hold. There’s no guarantee that he will win, even with polling rebounding since MVP Harris became the presumptive nominee. Casey may have to win at the same time as Donald Trump wins the state. The ratings aggregators rate this race as “Leans Democratic”.
The question is whether or not the 2022 playbook will be sufficient to win in the Keystone State.
Bob Casey, Jr. for PA-SEN
Official Senate Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | YouTube | Threads
Campaign Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | YouTube | DONATE | Volunteer
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