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FIRST ON FOX – Dave McCormick, the Republican candidate running for the Senate in the swing state of Pennsylvania, is showcasing a second straight formidable fundraising quarter.
McCormick reports bringing $6.2 million in the January-March first quarter of 2024 fundraising, according to figures shared first with Fox News on Wednesday.
The haul includes $1 million contributed by McCormick, a former hedge fund executive, West Point graduate, Gulf War combat veteran and Treasury Department official in former President George W. Bush’s administration.
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Republican Senate candidate Dave McCormick launches a campaign bus tour, in Lititz, Pennsylvania, on Feb. 10, 2024. (Dave McCormick campaign)
The money raised by McCormick the past three months comes close to the $6.4 million he brought in during the fourth quarter of last year. That haul also included $1 million of his own money.
McCormick will face off in November against longtime Democratic Sen. Bob Casey, in a high profile and expensive race which could ultimately decide whether the GOP wins back the Senate majority.
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Casey, who served a decade as the state’s auditor general and then treasurer before winning election to the Senate in 2006, has yet to announce his first quarter fundraising figures. Candidates running for federal office have until later this month to file their reports with the Federal Election Commission.
Casey, the son of a popular former governor, raised $3.6 million in the fourth quarter.
Sen. Bob Casey speaks during a Senate hearing in Washington, D.C., on March 9, 2023. (Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
McCormick, who is making his second straight Senate run, was part of a crowded and combustible battle for the 2022 GOP nomination. He ended up losing the nomination by a razor-thin margin to celebrity doctor and cardiac surgeon Mehmet Oz, who secured a primary victory thanks to a late endorsement from former President Donald Trump. Oz ended up losing the general election to Democrat John Fetterman.
This time around, McCormick faces no major opposition in the GOP primary in Pennsylvania later this month. He is backed by longtime Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell and the Pennsylvania GOP, and was encouraged to run by the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which is the party’s Senate campaign arm.
McCormick – as he was in 2022 – is once again facing incoming fire over his residency.
McCormick, who grew up in northeast Pennsylvania and who is the son of the Keystone State’s first state university system chancellor, was attacked for owning a house in an affluent part of Connecticut, where he lived for years before buying a home in Pittsburgh ahead of his 2022 Senate campaign.
Republican Senate candidate Dave McCormick marches in the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on March 16, 2024. McCormick marched alongside his wife Dina Powell. (Dave McCormick campaign)
Pennsylvania Democrats have repeatedly charged that “the real David McCormick is a mega-millionaire Connecticut hedge fund executive who is lying about living in Pennsylvania.”
But McCormick campaign spokeswoman Elizabeth Gregory told Fox News that “Pennsylvanians from across the commonwealth are joining the movement to elect Dave McCormick, a 7th-generation Pennsylvanian, combat veteran, and PA job creator who will bring new leadership and fresh ideas to the Senate.”
“Dave is exactly the kind of candidate who can beat Bob Casey, secure a Senate majority and get this country back on track,” she emphasized.
Democrats currently control the U.S. Senate with a 51-49 majority, but Republicans are looking at a favorable Senate map this year, with Democrats defending 23 of the 34 seats up for grabs.
Three of those seats are in red states that Trump carried in 2020 — Ohio, Montana and West Virginia, where Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin is not running for re-election. And Pennsylvania is one of five key general election battlegrounds where the Democrats are defending seats. Democrats may also have to worry about holding the open Senate seat in blue Maryland, where former GOP Gov. Larry Hogan is running.
Paul Steinhauser is a politics reporter based in New Hampshire.
