Republican U.S. Senate candidate David McCormick made an appeal to moderation during one of his final pitches to voters in Western Pennsylvania voters Wednesday night in a campaign appearance with Nikki Haley.
McCormick’s appearance with Haley could appeal to swing voters — particularly Republicans in the suburbs like Warrendale, where they spoke — who might be squeamish about voting for Republican nominee Donald Trump for president.
Haley, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and governor of South Carolina, lost her primary presidential campaign against Trump and hasn’t joined him on the campaign trail. And she didn’t give a full-throated endorsement of Trump on Wednesday but instead said that Republicans need to elect Trump in order to give McCormick a fighting chance.
“Dave McCormack can't win if we don't elect Donald Trump at the top of the ticket,” Haley said. “You may find Trump noisy, but what I will tell you is he understands that we've got to get this economy turned around.”
Although much of McCormick’s final pitch to voters was a bipartisan appeal, he was clear at the beginning of his speech that he believes his hopes are aligned with Trump’s.
“Who's ready to put President Trump back in the White House?” he said, drawing a louder crowd response than did Haley’s more muted endorsement of Trump.
But while he led with Trump, McCormick emphasized that he believes issues such as inflation and energy production are bipartisan issues.
“It's common sense that you can't spend so much that you drive up skyrocketing prices with inflation,” he said. “It’s common sense if you got the fourth-largest natural gas reserves in the world, you got to unlock it and have energy dominance.”
McCormick’s emphasis on the need for stricter immigration enforcement straddled his willingness to echo Trump’s rhetoric about the country letting in “convicted murders, convicted rapists,” while also making a more bipartisan appeal.
“We are a nation of immigrants. My amazing wife is an immigrant from Egypt,” he said. “We're also a nation of laws. We have to have a secure border.”
McCormick said his vision of America is one where people focus on what unites them and not what divides them. When he served in the military, he said, he served with a rural soldier from Alabama, a Black soldier from Virginia and a Hispanic soldier from Puerto Rico.
“I never remember talking about religion. I don't remember talking about race. We sure didn't talk about politics. Or gender,” he said. “All we talked about was protecting and taking care of one another when we deployed.”
Haley, too, said voters “need to take the emotion out of” their voting decisions and vote for Trump and McCormick because those candidates offer better policies on immigration, energy and foreign policy.
“I'm here because I'm the wife of a combat veteran. I don't want them to get deployed again,” she said. “I'm here because I'm a mom. And I listen to my daughter, who just got married, complain about her grocery bill over and over again.”
While both McCormick and Haley emphasized that their electoral fortunes ride with Trump’s, state Rep. Camera Bartolotta said she’s talked to Democratic voters who will never vote for Trump but she believes can be won over by McCormick.
“As hard as I've tried, as much as I've talked until I’m blue in the face, some are just not going to go Trump,” said Bartolotta, a Republican from Washington County. “But I'll say, hold on a second. How do you like Bob Casey?”
Bartlolotta said some Democrats who won’t vote for Trump are tired of Casey, the Democratic incumbent and McCormick’s opponent in the U.S. Senate race.
As the election season nears its end, McCormick reminisced about the closeness of his primary loss when he first sought the office in 2022 — by less than 900 votes to Dr. Mehmet Oz. This time, he said, he is giving his all to the race, despite his six daughters being “100% opposed” to him running again.
“When I ran last time, I was a little shy. I was new to it. And I sort of shuffled my feet and said, ‘I hope you'll vote for me.’ I'm telling you, I'm putting it all out there,” he said.
McCormick made a pitch that, as in his wrestling days at the United States Military Academy West Point, the outcome of the contest would be determined by whoever works harder at the end.
“It's about giving everything you've got and then more until the whistle blows,” he said. “That's what I'm going to do for the next six days. That's what I need you to do for the next six days. ... [We've] got to make Pennsylvania great again.”
