Bob Casey and Dave McCormick’s closing arguments in Pennsylvania’s U.S. Senate race

TOWANDA, Pa. — As the sun was setting over the Endless Mountains on Friday evening, Dave McCormick’s campaign bus rumbled to the top of a ridge overlooking the Susquehanna River and stopped outside VFW Post 1568.

Wearing alligator-skin boots, blue jeans, and a gingham button-down, the Republican U.S. Senate candidate stepped inside the lodge and was greeted with an ovation by the assembled veterans and their families.

“The best way that we can keep peace is to have strength — a military that’s not woke and focusing on millions of hours of DEI training,” said McCormick, a West Point graduate who served in the Gulf War. “A military’s single mission should be lethality, the capacity to destroy the enemy. No one wants peace more than people that have served in combat.”

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McCormick’s campaign against three-term U.S. Sen. Bob Casey (D., Pa.) is one of the most closely watched races in the country, and the Republican’s message is clear: I am strong, and Casey is weak.

“Whenever the bullets start flying, he ducks,” McCormick said of Casey at a campaign stop earlier Friday outside the state’s largest firearms shop, Grice Gun Shop in Clearfield.

Casey, meanwhile, has hammered McCormick over questions about the Republican’s ties to Pennsylvania and controversies related to his time as CEO of the world’s largest hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates.

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And as he travels the state, Casey has employed an old-fashioned bring-home-the-bacon appeal, pausing his stump speech to read from an index card and list the line items from President Joe Biden’s pandemic relief legislation that are earmarked for the county he is in.

“How about transit money? Twenty-five million dollars,” Casey said during a Westmoreland County Democratic get-out-the-vote event Thursday in Murrysville. “The community college — $9.5 million. Nine fire departments got help because of my votes and my work. Forty-six million dollars for bridge investment in this county.”

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If McCormick has framed the race as one of strength vs. weakness, Casey has worked to make it a question of honesty.

In merciless TV ads and during their two debates, the incumbent has criticized McCormick for talking tough on China on the campaign trail despite Bridgewater playing a pioneering role in opening up Chinese markets for U.S. investment firms during his tenure. And he has accused McCormick of lying about where he lives.

McCormick grew up in Bloomsburg and worked in the Pittsburgh area for about a decade as an adult. But he lived in Connecticut, where Bridgewater is based, for years before returning to the Keystone State around 2022, when he launched his political career. While campaigning this year, he has continued to spend time in Connecticut, where one of his daughters from a previous marriage still lives.

“Last time I checked, Connecticut is not one of our 67 counties,” Casey said in Murrysville.

Standing next to him was a physical embodiment of that notion. It was Halloween, and U.S. Sen. John Fetterman (D., Pa.), who is not up for reelection this year, wore a costume inspired by the 2007 comedy Superbad, with a sandwich board-style printout of the character McLovin’s Hawaiian fake ID, but with the picture and details changed to McCormick’s and “Pennsylvania” scribbled across the top.

”Who wants to talk about the Connecticut guy?” said Fetterman, who won his seat in 2022 by defeating Mehmet Oz amid questions about whether the celebrity physician lived in New Jersey. “He is trying to hope that people are going to pick a guy that doesn’t live in Pennsylvania. That didn’t work great for Dr. Oz.”

Amy Lowmaster, a Punxsutawney resident who attended McCormick’s Clearfield event, said she wasn’t bothered by questions about McCormick’s residence.

“What man wouldn’t live near his daughters?” Lowmaster said. “That’s not fair that they criticize him about living in Connecticut. That was part of his life. But he is here now and he has history here, and he’s one of our own.”

Neither candidate faced a primary opponent, and both have sought to cast themselves as centrists in the general election.

McCormick this year has softened his stance on abortion rights, saying he opposes abortion but supports exceptions in cases involving rape, incest, or threats to the life of the mother. While running in the 2022 GOP primary, he articulated support only for the third exception.

In an unusual ad, McCormick looks directly at the camera and lays out an argument that it’s Casey who’s outside the mainstream on the issue, casting the Democrat’s vote in favor of legislation guaranteeing abortion rights nationwide as support for “late-term abortion.”

“Sen. Casey has the more extreme position,” he said. “I’m more middle of the road, and looking for common ground.”

Casey, meanwhile, has worked to create daylight between himself and his party on other issues, touting his support for natural gas fracking and running ads noting his alignment with former President Donald Trump on trade.

At a campaign stop Thursday in Allegheny County, Casey highlighted times he has opposed deals backed by Democratic administrations and supported aspects of Trump’s protectionist agenda, such as the 2018 U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement.

“Part of that record is also fighting to stop trade deals that I thought were bad for the country,” Casey told reporters at a get-out-the-vote event in Castle Shannon. “Whether that’s agreeing with a Republican president or a Democratic president, I don’t really care. It’s what we’ve got to do. I’ve got to do what’s best for Pennsylvania.”

The USMCA revised the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, which has been criticized for accelerating the loss of U.S. manufacturing jobs. Casey noted that he criticized NAFTA as state auditor general in the 1990s and opposed former President Barack Obama’s unsuccessful effort to form a Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, with Pacific Rim nations.

Erwin resident Marsha White attended Casey’s Murrysville event, a canvass launch, and said she was nervous: She had never volunteered to knock on doors for a campaign before and she was now preparing to do so deep in Trump country on behalf of Harris and Casey.

A Westmoreland County native, White said discussions about politics with her friends and family members have become increasingly vitriolic in the Trump era, and she admitted she has often struggled to stay out of the fray. Casey’s mild-mannered approach to politics, she said, was a welcome change of pace.

“He seems to be present, where he needs to be,” White said. “He has strong character. You don’t hear anything weird about him.”