The first big Senate race of 2024 takes shape

PHILADELPHIA — Pennsylvania’s Senate GOP primary just ended. But Republicans here are already plotting out the Senate race in 2024.

GOP leaders, donors and strategists are urging David McCormick, the former hedge fund CEO who lost by fewer than 1,000 votes to Mehmet Oz in this year’s Republican Senate contest, to run again in two years against Democratic Sen. Bob Casey.

A person familiar with McCormick’s thinking said he is already looking at the possibility.

Casey, who walloped former GOP Rep. Lou Barletta in 2018 by double digits, will be up for reelection in 2024. Though he has been a formidable opponent in the past, Republicans think the three-term senator will be vulnerable because he has become more liberal in recent years, and political headwinds have shifted rightward under President Joe Biden.

“I would absolutely encourage Dave to run,” said Rob Gleason, former chair of the state’s Republican Party, who noted that “he’s got 100 percent name ID” and is “going to have the finances” to pay for another campaign. “He would clear the field. There’d be no primary.”

In a sign of how seriously he is tending to his political future, McCormick and his wife, Dina Powell, are planning to continue living in Pennsylvania, people close to them said. Before running for the Senate, McCormick resided for years in Connecticut, where his former firm Bridgewater Associates is headquartered.

Despite the recent Connecticut address, McCormick has deep roots in Pennsylvania: He was born in the southwestern part of the state, grew up in Columbia County, and came back to the Pittsburgh region as an adult. McCormick's father also previously served as president of Bloomsburg University.

Another indication McCormick has an eye on his future political prospects: He’s planning to travel around the state soon to visit with GOP leaders, according to Gleason.

“He’s received many phone calls inquiring whether Dave will consider running for this Casey Senate seat,” said a statewide Republican leader close to McCormick.

Last week, McCormick conceded to Oz in a race so close that a recount was ordered by state officials. Both candidates hired armies of lawyers for the showdown and fought over handfuls of ballots. But as election administrators around the state tallied ballots again, it became clear that McCormick would not be able to gain enough votes to overtake Oz. By bowing out before the recount was officially concluded, McCormick enabled the party to begin the process of uniting behind Oz after a divisive race, rather than wait for the recount and additional court challenges to get resolved.

The primary — which came down to Oz, McCormick and conservative commentator Kathy Barnette, who surged in the final days of the race — was one of the most expensive and nastiest contests in the state in recent years. McCormick loaned his campaign at least $11 million, according to the most recent campaign finance filings.

McCormick framed himself as the true conservative in the primary, arguing that he was stronger than Oz when it came to supporting gun rights and opposing abortion. But he was buffeted by negative ads hitting him as being too cozy with China while at Bridgewater. Former President Donald Trump, who endorsed Oz, slammed McCormick by name as “absolutely the candidate of special interests and globalists and the Washington establishment.”

If McCormick runs for Senate again in 2024, he would have to grapple with the aftershocks of those attacks — especially from Trump, who has a diehard base in Pennsylvania. McCormick also upset some Republicans in the state when he filed a lawsuit to count mail-in ballots that lacked a date on the envelope, but that were received on time. Some in the GOP likewise thought he took too long to concede.

But McCormick also impressed other state Republicans who argue that coming within a whisker of defeating a national celebrity with Trump’s full-throated support is an impressive feat. They also like the fact that McCormick is fantastically wealthy, forged relationships with Republican leaders across the state during his campaign, and has a résumé that includes West Point and the Gulf War.

Running against Casey presents a different set of challenges. Before 2018, Republicans thought he had veered too far left, too. After a career of describing himself as “pro-life,” the senator voted so reliably in favor of abortion rights in the two years leading up to that campaign that NARAL Pro-Choice America’s vote tally gave him a 100 percent rating. He also shifted his position on gun laws after the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

But 2018 was a banner year for Democrats, and Casey won by 13 percentage points by appealing to both suburban swing voters in the Philadelphia area and working-class white voters in counties like Erie and Northampton. Republicans think the current backlash against Democrats over inflation, rising gas prices and an uptick in crime will persist into 2024.

Asked for comment, Casey spokesperson Natalie Adams said in a statement, “Senator Casey is focused on improving the lives of Pennsylvanians and helping Democrats up and down the ballot win in 2022. While Republicans wring their hands about an election 2.5 years away, Senator Casey is going to keep building on his long record of delivering for Pennsylvania's working families in Washington.”

Pat Deon, a Pennsylvania GOP donor, is among the state’s power players eyeing McCormick’s future.

“McCormick would be a great candidate for any office he wants to seek going forward,” he said. “And I support him.”

Jim Schultz, a former Trump White House lawyer who served as McCormick’s campaign chair, told POLITICO “this is just the beginning” for him.

“Dave ran a great race and exited with grace for the good of the party, the commonwealth and this country,” he said. “Dave is immensely popular and will be a force in GOP politics for years to come. For now, I know he is focused on bringing the party together to beat [Democratic Senate nominee John] Fetterman in November.”

While conceding to Oz last week, McCormick said “the bad news for the Democrats is they’re going to get a lot more of me.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” he added. “This is my home. This is our home. This is where my dreams were launched, and this is where we plan to have a future.”