November 07, 2024, 04:19 PM
downtownvIn a stunning upset, Republican Dave McCormick unseats longtime U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, according to the AP
It’s possible that the narrow margin triggers Pennsylvania’s automatic recount process.
Republican Dave McCormick, an Army veteran and former hedge fund CEO, has unseated three-term Democratic incumbent Bob Casey Jr. in Pennsylvania’s nationally watched U.S. Senate race, according to The Associated Press.
While Casey held a lead in polls for much of the campaign, the race tightened in the final days. And McCormick ended up squeaking out a victory of less than 1 percentage point. It took two days days before the race to be called as ballots were counted across the state.
A recount is still possible given the close margin in the race. Casey has not yet conceded.
Casey’s downfall is a shocking development in Pennsylvania politics. The mild-mannered moderate who previously served as state treasurer and state auditor general has won six statewide elections and is the son of a well-known governor.
It’s even more notable because Pennsylvania’s statewide election results this year appears to be aberrational. Five presidential swing states had Senate races this year, and Donald Trump won all five. But voters from Michigan to Arizona appear to have been splitting their tickets because Democratic Senate candidates have won or are leading four of those races.
Casey is poised to be the only Democratic Senate candidate in a swing state to fall short this year, allowing McCormick and Trump completing a statewide sweep in Pennsylvania.
McCormick made his first run for office in 2022, losing by fewer than 1,000 votes to Mehmet Oz in the GOP primary for that year’s Senate race in Pennsylvania.
Throughout the campaign, he worked relentlessly to tie Casey to Vice President Kamala Harris’ agenda, casting the incumbent as a “weak career politician” who, despite his moderate reputation, would be a “rubber stamp” for a liberal Democratic establishment.
McCormick also touted his compelling personal story, which became both a potent selling point for his candidacy as well as a target for Democratic attacks.
McCormick was born in western Pennsylvania and grew up in Bloomsburg, where his father was the president of the state university in the city. He went to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, was a member of the wrestling team, and served in the Gulf War. He earned a Ph.D. in international relations from Princeton University after the war.
McCormick then spent about a decade in Pittsburgh, where he led the software company FreeMarkets. In 2005, he joined George W. Bush’s administration, with prominent roles in the Commerce Department and the U.S. Treasury.
After leaving Washington in 2009, McCormick became an executive at the Connecticut-based Bridgewater Associates, the largest hedge fund in the world and the subject of many of Casey’s jabs. Bridgewater, for instance, played a pioneering role in opening up opportunities for U.S. investment firms in Chinese markets, leading Casey to say it was hypocritical of McCormick to talk on China on the campaign trail.
McCormick left the firm around the time he launched his political career in 2022, and questions about whether he has fully moved back to Pennsylvania dogged him throughout his two runs for the Senate. Even this year, it was reported that he frequently flies back to Connecticut, where one of his daughters from a previous marriage lives.
McCormick is now married to Dina Powell McCormick, who was a deputy national security adviser in Trump’s first administration and who also served in the Bush administration.
The race saw more than $300 million in spending by the campaigns, their parties, and outside spending groups. The largest outside spender was Keystone Renewal, a pro-McCormick super PAC backed primarily by finance industry billionaires, some of whom knew the Republican from his days at Bridgewater.
The PAC’s spending was crucial to making McCormick financially competitive in just his second run for office against a man who had won statewide elections, including races for Pennsylvania auditor general and treasurer.
Ultimately, McCormick’s message resonated with voters anxious about the economy — and eager to back a candidate aligned with Trump.
McCormick “has a great background in business,” said Mary Dodgi, 80, a retired teacher who lives in Ross Township in the North Hills of Pittsburgh and who, up until a decade ago, had been a registered Democrat. Now, she said, McCormick and Trump represented the party “for the people.”
At McCormick’s watch party in Pittsburgh, supporters who had spent weeks knocking on doors took time to celebrate. Gloria Hutcherson, 73, a born-again Christian and volunteer with the Tennessee Federation of Republican Women who spent two weeks canvassing in Harrisburg and Pittsburgh, said McCormick shared Trump’s conservative values, like excluding transgender athletes from women’s sports and closing the border.
“He is a businessman, like Donald Trump,” she said.
In the 2022 Senate race, Trump snubbed McCormick in the primary by endorsing Oz, the celebrity physician who was defeated by U.S. Sen. John Fetterman (D., Pa.) in the general election. This year, Trump endorsed McCormick, and he faced no significant competition in the primary.
That set the stage for a race with no less on the line than in 2022, given the Senate’s narrow partisan margins, but with a significantly different tone than the match-up featuring the polarizing and headline-grabbing personalities of Oz and Fetterman.
Casey is a rank-and-file Democratic senator who preaches the virtues of bipartisan civility, while McCormick is a clean-cut Army man-turned-businessman. And while neither man shied away from attacking the other on the campaign trail, there was little drama in the race, and voters were left with a relatively simple choice between a career politician and a plutocratic newcomer.
Neither candidate criticized their respective party’s presidential nominee, but both also sought to create some daylight between them and the top of the ticket.
Casey emphasized repeatedly that he does not support a ban on natural gas fracking, a position Harris took in 2019 but has since backed away from. And McCormick said throughout the race that he believed Biden won the 2020 presidential election, which is usually seen as an affront by Trump.
https://www.inquirer.com/polit...tm_term=News%20AlertNovember 08, 2024, 07:22 AM
oddballquote:
Originally posted by downtownv:
I am only somewhat familiar with Kari Lake. What did she ever do, that she has so many haters?
IMO, she is popular in AZ, I was in Sedona recently and signs were everywhere. She is a MAGA Republican very much aligned with Trump, and has been very loyal to him in the last four years. But AZ, IMO under suspicious circumstances, turned from red to blue in a matter of a few years, and it is not because of CA transplants moving there. Katie Hobbs became Sec. of State (in charge of elections) in AZ in 2018, and the following 2020 election was the beginning of these prolonged ballot issues. Hobbs is now governor and the Dems do not want to see the top AZ offices occupied by Republicans.
But the eyes of a nation is on AZ right now, they are under a microscope, you can bet Lara Trump and the RNC is on their ass. After Maricopa County is counted, Lake very well will be a senator.
November 08, 2024, 07:26 AM
Tooky13quote:
Originally posted by downtownv:
I am only somewhat familiar with Kari Lake. What did she ever do, that she has so many haters?
She's a staunch anti-abortion advocate and her opponents get big bucks from the 'pro-choice' mega-donors (i.e. Planned Parenthood). She should have won the governorship (many think she actually did), but for those out-of-state millions that backed the lib-tard Katie Hobbs. They were just successful in having Prop 139 passed here, allowing unrestricted abortion, due to more than $35 million of outside money.
November 08, 2024, 08:40 AM
P220 SmudgeI think a fair bit of why Kari Lake is so hated is that she's an attractive, well-spoken, conservative woman armed with the facts, and very quick on her feet. She absolutely eviscerates the people that come at her repeating the Democrat talking points. Just like Megyn Kelly, Candace Owens, Vivek Ramaswamy, and some other high profile conservatives that Democrats and leftists feel like they should own because of their genitalia or skin color, there's a special level of ire reserved for these people and Lake is no exception. If they were Democrats, they would be superstars, but they're saying the wrong things. Additionally, as mentioned, she's hardcore MAGA, and of course, that just kicks her into her own special tier of hate and vitriol.
I want her to get to DC for the same reasons I voted three times to send Trump there: Because they drive the Democrats into a frothing, incoherent fury, and anyone that pisses them off that badly absolutely needs to be there, smiling at them every day while they work to advance a conservative agenda.
