Former hedge-fund CEO Dave McCormick officially launched his second bid for a Pennsylvania U.S. Senate seat Thursday while still facing claims that he’s not a full-time resident of the Keystone State.
McCormick made his announcement at the Heinz History Center in Pittsburgh, describing his prospective opponent, Democratic senator Bob Casey as a “rubber stamp” for Joe Biden.
“We can do better. We cannot lose our country. We cannot lose our culture. We must not accept the status quo,” he said, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.
The longtime businessman is a native of the state: born in Washington, PA, and raised in the Pittsburgh region. But in recent years, McCormick has made his home in Connecticut, where his former firm Bridgewater Associates is headquartered.
In 2022, McCormick sought the Republican nomination for the Senate seat left open by the retiring Pat Toomey and was caught in a contentious primary with Mehmet Oz, the celebrity doctor. The two flung insults back and forth over the airwaves while both attempted to fend off accusations of carpetbagging from the Democratic side. (Oz also spent the bulk of his recent years living in neighboring New Jersey.) In the end, McCormick lost the nomination to Oz, who was then defeated by former lieutenant governor John Fetterman.
Questions about McCormick’s residency will likely continue into the 2024 race. Prior to his first Senate bid, McCormick purchased a home in Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill North neighborhood and sold his family’s home in Fairfield, Connecticut. But the Associated Press reported last month that McCormick’s primary residence appears to be a $16 million mansion he rents in Connecticut’s Gold Coast. A McCormick spokesperson told the AP, “While he maintains a residence in Connecticut as his daughters finish high school, Dave’s home is in Pittsburgh and for the last 10 years he has owned a working farm in his hometown of Bloomsburg, which has been in the family for decades.”
On Thursday, Vanity Fair reported that McCormick has made frequent private-jet trips between Connecticut and Pennsylvania as recently as last month, including one instance where the candidate traveled from Bridgeport, Connecticut, to Pennsylvania’s Allegheny County to attend a Republican event.
Residency issues keep coming up for Pennsylvania’s Republican candidates. Oz’s general-election campaign was often hampered by his opponent Fetterman’s taunts about the former doctor’s New Jersey ties. Former senator Rick Santorum also faced accusations that he no longer lived in the state he represented. He ended up at the center of a scandal involving the fact that five of his children attended an online cyber school based in Pennsylvania despite living in Virginia, forcing the local school district and taxpayers to foot the bill. The state would end up settling with the Penn Hills school district while Santorum removed his kids from the school in question.
McCormick will likely face a much easier path to the Republican nomination than he did last year. Doug Mastriano, who mounted a quixotic, far-right challenge to Josh Shapiro for governor last year, has ruled out a potential Senate bid and recently voiced support for McCormick. McCormick has also been backed by Sean Parnell, a former Army ranger who previously ran for the Senate in 2022 with Donald Trump’s blessing but ultimately dropped out following a custody dispute with his estranged wife. Per his campaign, McCormick also has the support of all of the Republicans in Pennsylvania’s congressional delegation.
