Republicans literally begged former hedge fund manager David McCormick to run for Senate against Pennsylvania's Democratic incumbent Bob Casey. McCormick’s bona fides for Republican donor adulation seem to have been that he is rich and doesn’t actually live in the state he’s running for office. Of course, when McCormick lost the Republican primary to Dr. Mehmet Oz, one of the many reasons Dr. Oz got shellacked by Sen. John Fetterman was the fact that he didn’t really live in Pennsylvania either.
But McCormick isn’t facing any real opposition for the nomination of his party this go-round. Now he faces two major self-inflicted obstacles: his transparent attempt to rebrand his very recent hard-line anti-abortion stance, and the fact that he mostly lives in Connecticut. You don’t have to be a geography major to know that Connecticut is not a place in Pennsylvania. Recently, McCormick went on ABC27 to do an interview [above] and was asked, “How many days in the past year have you lived here in Pennsylvania?”
His answer was … quite something. After saying he was “born in Pennsylvania, raised in Pennsylvania,” McCormick went on to detail all the not-residing-in-Pennsylvania he did, including having “had a great opportunity when I was working in the government to move and run a company that was outside of our great commonwealth.” But remember how I told you he lost to Oz in 2022? Well, for McCormick, campaigning in the Keystone State is the same thing as living there. McCormick said that during the “last campaign, I spent all the majority of my time in Pennsylvania.”
Having rambled for about 30 seconds, McCormick stumbled through, saying, “And, and I am now. I live in Pennsylvania. I do. I said I live in Pennsylvania. I live in Pittsburgh. I have a home in Pittsburgh. I have a family farm that is in the town I grew up in. I didn't grow up on the farm, but I have it.”
As the Associated Press reported, McCormick’s claims of shuttling between Pittsburgh and Connecticut are misleading:
But the reality is more complex. While McCormick does own a home in Pittsburgh, a review of public records, real estate listings and footage from recent interviews indicates he still lives on Connecticut's “Gold Coast,” one of the densest concentrations of wealth in America. The former hedge fund CEO rents a $16 million mansion in Westport that features a 1,500-bottle wine cellar, an elevator and a “private waterfront resort” overlooking Long Island Sound.
...
Three months before launching his first Senate run in January 2022, McCormick sold his family's $6.5 million home in Fairfield, Connecticut. That was followed by the $2.8 million purchase of a stately Tudor-style home in Pittsburgh's Squirrel Hill North neighborhood, records show.
That might be why McCormick spent a solid amount of time fundraising big money from former and current Goldman Sachs executives at an exclusive Hamptons fundraiser just before announcing his bid. I mean, even with a helicopter, Westport, Connecticut, is sooooo much closer than Pittsburgh.
Republished with permission from Daily Kos.
