David McCormick allies hope to avoid another GOP Senate primary fight in Pa.
POLITICS PLAYBOOK
Republican Party officials and strategists have told Pennsylvania businessman David McCormick that if he runs for the U.S. Senate again, the party will coalesce around him to avoid the bruising primary battles that elevated flawed candidates in the2022 midterms.
Mr. McCormick, who released a book on Tuesday outlining his vision for America, has been laying the groundwork for a 2024 U.S. Senate run, seeking assurances from state and national party leaders that they will have his back this time. Mr. McCormick ran for the Senate last year and lost in a costly, bitter primary by a few hundred votes to television celebrity Mehmet Oz, who went on to lose the general election to Democrat John Fetterman. Pennsylvania was the only state in the midterms where a Senate seat flipped from Republican to Democrat.
Mr. McCormick, who grew up near Pittsburgh, hasn’t been subtle about his continued Senate aspirations. In early March, he spoke at the National Republican Senatorial Committee winter meeting. He recently hired two experienced operatives who worked on the reelection campaign of Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, of Florida.
In recent interviews, a dozen Republican insiders in Washington and Pennsylvania said that if Mr. McCormick gets in the race, other possible GOP contenders would clear the way for him. Beating Democratic Sen. Bob Casey, a three-term incumbent whose family name has been a staple in
Pennsylvania politics for more than three decades, will be a challenge, the strategists and party leaders say, but not impossible with the right candidate.
“It’s real simple: It’s either Dave McCormick and nobody else, or it’s not Dave McCormick and it’s everybody else,” said John Brabender, a longtime GOP operative with Pennsylvania ties, referring to the potential GOP field. “Everybody agrees that Dave is the right guy. He checks all the critical boxes.”
Republicans see Mr. McCormick, a former hedge fund manager who graduated from the U.S. Military Academy and worked in the George W. Bush administration, as an ideal general-election candidate in the mold of Mitt Romney — a fiscally conservative businessman who shuns inflammatory rhetoric that they can sell in the crucial swing suburbs of Philadelphia. (In 2012, Republicans believed the same about Mr. Romney, who lost the three, populous Philadelphia collar counties to Barack Obama in that year’s presidential election.)
Like many Republicans in the post-Donald Trump era, Mr. McCormick, a first-time political candidate, aligned himself with the former president as he tried to win his endorsement in 2022, traveling to Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago hometo court him.
But Mr. Trump ultimately backed Dr. Oz. The former president publicly mocked Mr. McCormick at a campaign rally ahead of the primary, calling him a “liberal Wall Street Republican” who was “totally controlled ... by Mitch McConnell.”
This time, Mr. McCormick is “not going on a suicide mission,” said one Pennsylvania
GOP operative familiar with Mr. McCormick’s thinking, whospoke on the condition of anonymity to talk candidly about his plans, adding that Mr. McCormick’s decision will be heavily influenced by how much he can consolidate party support.
Mr. McCormick, through a spokesperson, declined an interviewrequest.
National Republicans have already signaled that they are ready to lend support. At the March meeting of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), Mr. McCormick was given a featured speaking slot. During his remarks, he hinted at his plans, saying, “Politics is like bad whiskey. It tastes bad going down and you can’t get it out of your system,” according to a person in the room, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private event. The next day, NRSC
Chairman Steve Daines, R-Mont., called out Mr. McCormick by name during a presentation about the 2024 election, saying he would “make a great Senate candidate,” according to the person who was there.
Complicating the party’s desire to anoint Mr. McCormick is a possible primary challenge from state Sen. Doug Mastriano, the farright Republican who won the gubernatorial primary last year and then lost by 15 percentage points in the general election to Democrat Josh Shapiro. Mr. Mastriano, who has espoused Christian nationalist views, said in a recent interview with Politico that he was “praying” on whether to run for U.S. Senate.
Many Republicans blamed Mr. Mastriano for dragging down the Republican ticket in 2022, costing them not only the governorship, but the races down the ballot. “I’ve not spoken with anyone with a leadership role in Pennsylvania’s Republican Party who thinks Sen. Mastriano should run for the U.S. Senate,” said Sam DeMarco, chairman of the Republican Committee of Allegheny County, who is also a big McCormick supporter.
Mr. McCormick, who was the chief executive of Bridgewater Associates until 2022, is also attractive to the national party because of his ability to self-fund his campaign — he spent more than $14 million of his own money in 2022 — freeing up the NRSC and others to spend money on other tough races.
On Wednesday, Mr. McCormick kicked off a statewide book tour. His new book, “Superpower in Peril: A Battle Plan to Renew America,” lays out a conservative policy agenda for the country, a platform that could easily translate to a campaign-stump speech.
“What it offers is a set of policies that are anchored to core conservative principles but also recognize how Washington has failed to preserve liberty and opportunity for all Americans and to protect American values,” Mr. McCormick writes in the book.
Democrats are already readying their attacks on Mr. McCormick, preparing to resurface the criticisms he faced during the 2022 GOP primary accusing him of working for companies that invested in China and out-sourced American jobs.
“For months, Pennsylvania Republicans savaged McCormick over his record of outsourcing jobs and for his close ties to China, Wall Street and Mitch McConnell,” said David Bergstein, spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. “With Mastriano making noises about entering the race, Republicans’ Senate primary dynamics are getting messier by the day.”
At least one McCormick supporter isn’t convinced he’s going to run. David Urban, a GOP operative and Trump campaign adviser who calls Mr. McCormick a friend, said he wouldn’t be surprised if Mr. McCormick weighed his options and ultimately decided it wasn’t worth going through another hard-fought campaign.
“If there’s somebody who can beat Bob Casey,” Mr. Urban said, “it’s McCormick ... and that’s why everyone is pushing him so hard,” Mr. Urban said. “He’s truly on the fence, his heart really wants to run, he’s a patriotic guy. They’d be lucky to have him.”