Senate candidate tells Peters crowd country heading ‘in a terrible direction’
Brad Hundt/Observer-Reporter
U.S. Senate candidate David McCormick at an appearance at Atria’s Restaurant in Peters Township Thursday
Brad Hundt/Observer-Reporter
David McCormick, a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, addresses a crowd at Atria’s Restaurant in Peters Township Thursday.
To most Pennsylvania voters, David McCormick is a figure they have seen almost exclusively on television ads that have blanketed the airwaves in recent weeks.
Republicans in Peters Township were able to get a closer look at McCormick at lunchtime Thursday when the candidate for U.S. Senate stopped at Atria’s Restaurant in McMurray to talk up his conservative bona fides, his business background and how his Pennsylvania roots “define who I am.”
McCormick is one of a handful of Republicans vying to replace Pat Toomey in the Senate. Two months out from the primary, McCormick has vaulted to the front of the GOP field along with Dr. Mehmet Oz, the TV physician who threw his hat into the ring a few weeks before McCormick. Both candidates have come under fire for recently living outside Pennsylvania, and Oz and McCormick have traded fire in ads, with McCormick’s campaign saying Oz is a Republican-in-name-only and a “Hollywood liberal,” while Oz and his allies accuse McCormick of being too close to China in his business dealings.
“I had no plan to run for elected office, and then Afghanistan happened,” McCormick said, referred to the chaotic withdrawal of U.S. troops from the country last summer. “That left me sick to my stomach.”
Born in Washington, Pa., the 56-year-old McCormick was raised in the Pittsburgh region and attended high school in Bloomsburg when his father served as president of Bloomsburg University. A West Point graduate and U.S. Army veteran, McCormick was undersecretary of the treasury for international affairs in the George W. Bush administration. He joined the Connecticut-based hedge fund Bridgewater Associates in 2009, becoming its CEO in 2020. He resigned from the position in January.
At the Peters event, McCormick acknowledged that until months ago he was a resident of Connecticut, but is now registered to vote in Pennsylvania, has a home in the Pittsburgh area, and “I’ve spent half my life as a resident of Pennsylvania.”
Noting that he was speaking to a predominantly older audience, McCormick compared America today to the America of the late 1970s, with its inflation and high gas prices, and likened President Biden to Jimmy Carter. He called the president’s economic policies “socialist” and said “the country is cascading out of control in the wrong direction.”
How would he fix it? McCormick said he supports reducing the size of government, supports law-and-order policies, school choice and the possibility of breaking up “Big Tech” companies through anti-trust laws. He also said public schools and colleges and universities are “teaching a history of America that I don’t recognize.”
“We almost need a rewiring of society,” he said.
He also explained that he supported the trade policies against China Donald Trump put in place when he was president, and that the origin of COVID-19 needed to be investigated. A supporter of term limits, McCormick pledged he would only serve two terms in the U.S. Senate if elected, and would be putting his assets in a blind trust.
Despite the bleak image of America he presented, McCormick explained that he was upbeat about the country’s prospects.
“Here’s the crazy thing,” he said. “I’m an optimist. I’m a happy warrior.”