BETHEL PARK, Pennsylvania — Late last week, David McCormick found himself in front of a tough, smart crowd brimming with a lot of questions about his candidacy. The Washington County native told the crowd he knew his job that night was to face their scrutiny; then, he challenged them to throw the kitchen sink at him.
“I want you to think about the question that you won’t ask, and then, you’re going to lean over to your wife or your husband or whoever else and say, ‘I wish I would ask this, but it’d be too uncomfortable,’” McCormick told the crowd of over 200 seasoned conservative voters.
“I want you to just start with the most uncomfortable questions, anything that’s on your mind, and I’ll do my best to answer them. And then, if we get all the questions, we could just socialize. Let’s start with you here and then go to you, sir,” he said, pointing to the first questioner.
For the next 90 minutes, McCormick fielded questions that ranged from where he stood on abortion (he is pro-life), the integrity of the election process (he supports voter ID and strengthening the process at the state level), and his biggest challenge (name ID in a field that has a former nationally syndicated television host).
When asked if he made it through the primary process how would tackle either John Fetterman or Conor Lamb as his general election opponent, McCormick first observed how far left each candidate has been forced to move because of the preferences of an increasingly left-wing Democratic electorate. In last year’s primaries, three incumbent big-city Pennsylvania Democratic mayors lost to liberal challengers.
McCormick said that Lamb has attempted to portray himself as centrist but that his voting record does not bear that out. Lamb and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whose positions are reflective of the liberal left wing of the Democratic Party, agreed on 93% of the votes cast during the 117th Congress in 2021 and 2022. That’s up 5 points from their 88% agreement on the votes taken in the 116th Congress of 2019 and 2020.
As far as a matchup with Fetterman, an unabashed left-winger, McCormick promised some great entertainment “because you’ve got the guy who is walking around with the tattoos and the shorts and all that stuff and really presenting himself as a badass,” he said, referring to Fetterman, “then you got the guy [himself] who was an Army ranger who actually went into combat and actually is one.”
McCormick, a varsity wrestler, left his home in Bloomsburg after earning an appointment to West Point. He is a Bronze Star recipient Ranger School graduate who served in the 82nd Airborne during the Gulf War.
His visit to the southern suburbs of Western Pennsylvania marked his first meet-and-greet that wasn’t about pleasantries and shaking hands, although there was plenty of that before and after the event. This visit was about persuading voters, a must for a candidate acutely aware of his lack of celebrity glow but confident in his strengths as a candidate.
Allegheny County Republican Party Chairman Sam DeMarco, who has not endorsed anyone in the primary, said after the event that when McCormick outlined his experiences in both service to the country in both the military and in the private sector, it helped ease attendees’ skepticism. “There were a lot of people in that room who walked away impressed with him and the way he never skirted where he stood on issues,” said DeMarco.
DeMarco said the thing that his rivals and their super PACs have hit him the most on — his dealings with China — were put into sharp perspective by McCormick. “He believes that his past experience gives him a leg up because he understands how they think, how they negotiate, as well as their strengths and weaknesses,” he said.
DeMarco was referring to the attack ad that his chief Republican rival, Dr. Mehmet Oz, ran linking McCormick’s role as a hedge fund manager, which concluded with the tag line, “China’s friend, not ours.”
McCormick clearly came expecting that question. He did not shy away when asked about his experience dealing with China as a businessman or in President George W. Bush’s administration. “I’ve negotiated at the highest levels of our government against China, going toe-to-toe with them,” he said. “I also ran a global business and invested in 20 countries, including China. You may have seen the ads, right? We had about 2% of our revenue in China. And you know what? That’s going to make me better as a U.S. senator.”
“And just like when Donald Trump came into office and said, ‘Listen, here’s my set of experiences, and it’s going to make me a better president; I was a global businessman. I did business all around the world.’ I’m going to say the same thing.”
“There are two ways to handle my business experience,” he added. “One way is to handle it like Mitt Romney did, which is to back away from it. And the other way is to step into it. I’m stepping into it and saying those experiences are going to make me a great U.S. senator.”
Everyone agrees that Pennsylvania’s open-seat Senate race is one of the most important in terms of either party gaining the majority. Less understood is Pennsylvania’s conservative electorate. Where the media like to hint at an electorate made up of Qanon-era Trumpists, recent down-ballot elections point to voters who back center-right candidates in primaries and reliably show up on Election Day to help them win elected office.
The other media myth that dominates the conversation about Pennsylvania, thanks in large part to Trump’s 2016 victory here and his near-miss in 2020, is that he is the voters’ focus. It isn’t so. The voters have gotten past Trump. Their concerns about their families, communities, crime, mandates, the border, and the overall state of the country are what is on the table in this election — not Trump.
It is as if their only idea of who a Republican voter is comes from some character on Twitter with too much time on their hands or as if the only people they are eager to interview are the kooky outliers.
When McCormick ran his “Let’s go Brandon” ad during the Super Bowl on Sunday, many Democrats had the vapors over his use of that phrase. Yet if you talk to conservative voters, their reaction was interesting. They liked that McCormick got the joke — “Let’s Go Brandon” is a swipe at both Biden and the media. But they really liked that he used it to underscore specific issues, such as inflation, Afghanistan, Big Tech censorship, crime, trade deficits, and chaos at the border.
A new poll released Monday showed Oz at 27% of GOP primary voters, followed by McCormick with 16% and former Ambassador Carla Sands with 14%. The most telling number in the poll conducted by the Trafalgar Group was the 22% of likely Republican voters still undecided. That represents an opportunity for one of these candidates. DeMarco said that the more McCormick does events that take him where the voters are, “meeting them where they are in their communities, the more they will get to see who he is.”
To date, McCormick said he has been to 26 of the state’s 67 counties. He told the Washington Examiner in an interview that he intends to visit all 67. “I really want to be engaged with voters and have a constructive conversation and take their questions in a meaningful way,” he said.
