After holding various statewide elected offices for nearly 30 years, Bob Casey entered his 2024 reelection bid as an incumbent’s incumbent. He’d spent decades getting to know every corner of Pennsylvania, a state where his father had his own nearly three-decade career. And because of the deep roots of the Casey name, some experts thought Casey had little chance of losing his fourth election for the U.S. Senate this year, no matter what political headwinds he faced.
Yet after an election so close it went to a statewide recount, weeks of delay ended with Casey conceding to Republican Dave McCormick, And while few politicians have the kind of name recognition Casey does, Casey argues that advantage is actually what did him in.
“When you're running as an incumbent in a change environment, that creates a set of challenges,” said Casey.
Casey was the only Democratic Senate candidate to lose in a swing state this year — though he was arguably the least unsuccessful Democratic candidate running for a Pennsylvania statewide office. He lost by fewer votes than the other Democrats running for statewide office.
“I don't know enough about the dynamics in other states,” he said. “I know a good bit about Pennsylvania.”
Casey said McCormick was helped by the strong performance of Donald Trump at the top of the ticket, and by a small total spending advantage McCormick received from outside political PACs.
For his own part, Casey said he has not yet identified anything his campaign should have done differently.
“When someone loses, the usual verdict is because they did everything wrong,” Casey said. “And when people win, the people confer upon them omniscience. Neither I think is true.”
‘Tell the people who's on the side of the middle class’
Bob Casey’s career as an elected official in Pennsylvania began in 1996, when he was elected auditor general, and continued with a two-year stint as Treasurer before being elected to the first of three terms in the U.S. Senate.
The Senate passed 96 bills that Casey introduced since 2012, which ranked 6th among his 100 colleagues. Casey touts his role as a deciding vote on several pieces of historic legislation, including the Affordable Care Act, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act and the Inflation Reduction Act. Casey was revered among many in the disabilities community, for efforts like his work to help people with disabilities to save for their children’s future medical and support needs the same way they save for college.
But Casey said the current information environment — in which people receive their news from so many different sources — has made it more challenging for people to learn what their government is doing for them.
“Probably the best example of that, unfortunately, was the American Rescue Plan,” which provided funding for local governments and support for hard-pressed families, who received a cash subsidy and an enhanced child tax credit that has since expired. Casey said the measure “literally rescued a lot of communities and rescued a lot of families, because they would have been destitute without either the direct support of the $1,400 or the child tax credit or both.”
“If you don't have a regular and consistent process of telling people what you deliver, that probably undermines confidence in government,” Casey told WESA.
Casey said Democrats were also hurt by the length of time it takes to get government programs up and running. Many of the party’s biggest Biden-era initiatives — from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act to the CHIPS Act and the Inflation Reduction Act — have not been finished, or seen ground broken yet.
“Sometimes when there's an investment in, say, the Fort Duquesne Bridge of $60 million, a lot of people won't have a sense of that until it's done,” he said. “And I think that's true of a lot of investments. When they come to fruition, it's more manifest to people.”
Perhaps better known is the fact that while Casey began his political career as a moderate Democrat who opposed abortion rights, his positions on issues like abortion and gun control have shifted left. That’s true of the Democratic Party as a whole, even as the party has found it increasingly difficult to appeal to working class voters without a college degree.
But Casey thinks it’s too soon after the election for Democrats to say whether they need to change their messaging, or their underlying political positions.
Instead, Casey thinks the Democrats should prepare for the fight over Republican plans to extend Trump’s 2017 tax cuts. Casey said that under that law, middle class Americans received hundreds of dollars in breaks — while wealthy Americans received many tens of thousands of dollars. If Republicans line up again to give cuts that disproportionately favor the wealthy, Casey said, Democrats will have an opportunity to show who they are.
“The result of that tax fight will tell the American people who's on the side of the middle class and who's on the side of big corporations and very wealthy Americans,” he said. “And if it looks anything like the 2017 tax bill, that would be a bad, bad day for the middle class.”
Casey also thinks the Senate’s confirmation hearings over Trump’s cabinet appointments will be an important test to see whether the Senate will fulfill its duty to act independently of the executive branch. “That will be a strong message either way,” he said.
‘I took my daughters to the movie and Joe Biden called’
Since this year’s loss, Casey said, he’s been binging some TV shows with his wife. But that can’t last long: Because he doesn’t have a trust fund, he says he’s going to have to get a job. And he hasn’t ruled out running again at some point.
This isn’t Casey’s first setback. Prior to November, the only political campaign Casey lost was in 2002, when he ran for Governor. After the loss, Casey said, he finally got to take his two youngest daughters to the movie theater to see the movie Ice Age.
“We then walked out of the movie from the darkness of the theater to the bright light, sunny afternoon,” he said. And at some point that day, he said, he also got a call from Joe Biden – the only time his phone rang that day.
“Those are the two things I remember about that day,” he said. “I took my daughters to the movie Ice Age and Joe Biden called me.”
This year, Casey was there to answer the call from Biden, with whom he shares deep roots in Scranton.
Casey stood by Biden even after a disastrous debate performance that eventually led to him dropping out of the race. During a July press conference in Darlington, two weeks after Biden’s debate debacle, Casey declined to say that Biden should leave the race.
“The most important thing I can do between now and the election is to make sure people know the difference between me and my opponent,” Casey said.
His Republican rival seized on that loyalty, using it to fuel attacks on Casey as an insider who’d lost touch. During one of McCormick’s last events in Allegheny County before election day, McCormick tried to tie Casey to President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.
“The choice is between change, which I will bring, or the status quo that represents Senator Bob Casey,” McCormick said at the event.
“You have a choice,” said McCormick, who defined the Democratic option as “a 30-year career politician. He was born with a political spoon in his mouth.”
The McCormick campaign did not respond to requests for comment. But campaign advisor Brad Todd told the Washington Examiner that one of Casey’s biggest mistakes was standing beside Biden until he withdrew. And the magic of the Casey name, Todd said, was overrated.
“He was a mile wide and an inch deep,” he said. “A lot of people were familiar with his name, but nobody was familiar with anything he had done or was working on doing.”
Asked whether he should have tried to distance himself more from Biden, Casey answered, “no.”
“Those dynamics are just part of the back-and-forth of politics, the way people make judgments about one candidate versus the other,” Casey said. “The people of our state gave me a fair shot to be reelected again. And I fell short. That's on me.”
