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For months, Pennsylvania voters have been hearing Democratic U.S. Sen. Bob Casey decried as a White House lackey. Republican challenger Dave McCormick almost invariably describes him as “weak” — the ultimate insult in Donald Trump’s GOP — while he and allies accuse Casey of never standing up to Joe Biden or Kamala Harris.
Arguably, it’s working: A race in which Casey once enjoyed comfortable polling leads may now be within the margin of error. And Casey has a new ad out that implies some distance between himself and his party’s nominee — more about that later. But so far, McCormick’s campaign has offered little evidence that he’d be any more independent if he and Trump both win next month, as polls suggest could happen.
The campaign did not respond to my questions this week about where McCormick has stood up to Trump previously, or on which issues he would act as a “check” on Trump’s agenda. And while McCormick penned a recent op-ed in which he pledged to “be a voice for moral clarity in the Senate,” he spoke of that clarity only in terms of cracking down on college Gaza protests.
McCormick has arguably been subordinate to a mercurial and reputedly autocratic figure before — as a former top executive for the hedge fund Bridgewater. And judging from the best-known account of that firm, Wall Street Journal reporter Rob Copeland’s book “The Fund,” voters can’t assume he’d check even outlandish White House impulses.
Copeland depicts Bridgewater as the kind of enterprise you’d get if L. Ron Hubbard had established a hedge fund instead of Scientology. Under founder Ray Dalio, employee conversations are constantly recorded, and workers are subjected to public shaming sessions. Dalio is portrayed as a bully who demands an investigation of a men’s bathroom spill, but whose firm tolerates egregious mistreatment of female employees, even under McCormick’s leadership. And while McCormick rose to the post of CEO, the book makes clear that Dalio remained the firm’s driving spirit — one McCormick did little to challenge.
I interviewed Copeland earlier this year, and he said McCormick rose to the top “just never by saying a straight word about the firm founder in the founder’s presence.’
In the process, McCormick “sold out his ability to call out right and wrong,” Copeland told me. “There are so many examples in this book of when David comes to a cross in the road and he chooses the easy thing.”
The McCormick campaign didn’t respond to queries about Copeland’s book or his reflections on their candidate, either. When other news reported on claims that McCormick discouraged female employees from reporting unwanted advances, the campaign dismissed the allegations as “a retread from a year-old book” without responding directly. The campaign has said McCormick was “proud to have led Bridgewater,” which it said produced healthy pension returns for public employees.
Copeland said McCormick did have gifts that would serve him well in the Senate, including “an ability to walk into any room in the world and find something he has in common with you and lower the temperature. I think that’s something that we’re sorely lacking right now.”
But while Copeland said McCormick “had nothing good to say about Donald Trump” during his time in the White House, he wasn’t surprised to see McCormick embrace Trump in public: “He is very pragmatic, and David would not run for Senate to lose.”
There had been speculation that Trump and McCormick would have to overcome Trump’s repudiation of McCormick by endorsing Mehmet Oz in the Senate campaign of 2022. At the time, Trump derided McCormick as a “liberal Wall Street Republican,” and mocked his attempts to ingratiate himself. "If anybody was within 200 miles of me, [McCormick] hired them," Trump said.
But other than a Trump dominance-seeking gibe, there’s been little public sign of discord between the men. (“David’s a good man, and he’s going to really represent you,” Trump said in Latrobe this Saturday; “We’re with you Mr. President, 100%,” McCormick replied.).
Casey, meanwhile, is making a case for his own independence. His campaign is out with an ad that boasts that he “bucked Biden to protect fracking, and he sided with Trump to end NAFTA and put tariffs on China.” Republicans have chortled that the ad shows waning confidence in the Democratic presidential ticket, and some observers have noted that touting a willingness to join with Trump presents a mixed message, given Democratic depictions of him as an existential threat to democracy.
The Casey campaign says the ad illustrates that "Bob Casey always does what’s right for Pennsylvania, regardless of party, whether it’s standing up to China or fighting corporate greed.” And it points out that Casey has long staked out his own ground on trade and energy — opposing Barack Obama on some trade pacts while challenging Biden over a moratorium on future natural gas exports.
Casey has seized on Copeland’s book, releasing a new ad this week that argues that “under Dave McCormick, the world’s largest hedge fund was a dangerous place for women.”
Democrats haven’t foregrounded questions about whether McCormick would be a Trump rubber stamp — an attack that would presume Kamala Harris will lose. But it’s worth recalling the last time Trump was on the ballot with a Pennsylvania Senate candidate.
Like McCormick, Pat Toomey had a private-sector background in finance. But unlike him, Toomey conducted his 2016 campaign at a wary distance from Trump, winning on his own with help from conservative but college-educated suburbs where Trump fared poorly. Toomey was no “Never Trump” Republican, but the two did butt heads on such issues as trade and guns. And as Toomey was set to retire, he joined a handful of Republicans who voted in favor of Trump’s impeachment after the Jan. 6 uprising.
Could voters expect similar independence from a senator who practically campaigned as Trump’s, well, apprentice? If the polls are right, we’re a couple of coin tosses from finding out.
