Dave McCormick says election is choice between ‘strength and weakness’ at RNC

MILWAUKEE — Pennsylvania GOP Senate candidate Dave McCormick cast the November election as a choice between the country’s “greatness or its sad, disgraceful decline” as he spoke on the stage of the Republican National Convention on Tuesday.

McCormick spoke on night two of the convention, with his home state delegates seated immediately in front of the stage.

For McCormick, it was his second moment this week in the national spotlight. He was also scheduled to be one of the speakers at the Trump campaign rally in Butler on Saturday when the former president was the target of an assassination attempt. McCormick was seated near Trump when gunfire started and has spoken about the harrowing moments after the shooting in multiple interviews since.

“I want to first acknowledge what transpired just a few days ago in my home state,” McCormick said in his speech, “Where I witnessed from a literal front row seat in Butler, President Trump’s remarkable strength and resolve in a terrifying and unpredictable moment. The president rose brilliantly to the challenge. What a sad and frightening day for the families of those injured or lost, and for our great country.”

Pennsylvania is a hugely critical state that could determine who becomes president, and, in McCormick’s race against Democratic Sen. Bob Casey, which party controls the Senate.

For such a politically important state, Pennsylvania does not have many Republican Party leaders with national profiles. McCormick is the only Pennsylvania candidate scheduled to speak during the convention.

He spoke last in a lineup for GOP Senate candidates including Kari Lake, who is running in Arizona, and Bernie Moreno of Ohio.

McCormick’s speech came after a montage of images of Trump rallies with crowds cheering wildly juxtaposed with images of empty seats at Biden events and a video of Biden walking slowly into a Wawa in Philadelphia with Mayor Cherelle L. Parker.

He called the country less safe under Biden and Casey and praised Trump. “Under President Trump, America’s future was strong and prosperous and our adversaries feared stepping out of line,” he said.

McCormick’s support for Trump comes just two years after Trump backed his challenger, celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz, in an extremely close and bruising GOP Senate primary. Trump railed against McCormick then calling him a friend of China after endorsing Oz days before the election.

And early in his campaign, it was unclear how strongly McCormick would embrace Trump, whom he endorsed this year but has largely avoided speaking about.

A theme of this week has been Republicans coming home to the former president. Trump’s vice presidential pick, JD Vance, is a former critic and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, a Trump rival this year who drew thousands of protest votes, also spoke Tuesday night.

McCormick, a former hedge fund CEO who splits his time between Pittsburgh and Connecticut, is hoping to unseat three-term Casey, a household name in Pennsylvania whose father was governor of the state.

In most polls of Pennsylvania, he narrowly trails Casey, who has managed to poll ahead of President Joe Biden. Casey’s campaign contends that McCormick lies about living in Pennsylvania and has slammed McCormick for his leadership at Bridgewater Associates, the global hedge fund he led, which invested heavily in China.

McCormick touted his Pennsylvania bona fides on the stage on Tuesday describing himself as “a seventh-generation Pennsylvanian born and raised in the Keystone State.”

And, a day after McCormick called for a suspension of negative advertising in the Senate campaign after the assassination attempt on Trump, he attacked his opponent from the convention stage.

He called Casey a “do-nothing, out-of-touch, liberal, career politician.”

“When he votes, it’s for Joe Biden’s old, tired ideas,” McCormick said, describing the election as a choice “between strength and weakness. And between America’s greatness or its sad, disgraceful decline.”

McCormick’s strategy has been to emphasize the relationship between Casey and Biden, who are longtime allies. Following Biden’s bad debate performance last month, McCormick’s team put out ads saying Casey was lying about Biden’s fitness for office.

A new digital ad focuses on McCormick’s career as a high school wrestler and then in the military, juxtaposed with images of Biden, who is 81 and facing calls to drop out of the race.

McCormick grew up about 60 miles from Scranton near Bloomsburg, where his father, James, was president of Bloomsburg University. James McCormick went on to lead the state higher education system, and his family is still well-known in the area.

He served as a cadet at West Point, a paratrooper in Iraq during the Gulf War, and later in George W. Bush’s administration, where he was a top international economic adviser. He is married to Dina Powell, a former Trump administration official and former partner at Goldman Sachs.