What we learned from Bob Casey and Dave McCormick

HARRISBURG — Republican Party candidate Dave McCormick repeatedly attacked Democratic U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, calling him a “weak” career politician, while Casey, during the first statewide debate in Pennsylvania, described his challenger as a carpet-packing financier “bought and paid for by … big corporations and billionaires “. he watched the Senate race.

From border security to nuclear energy, the candidates turned almost every question they were asked into an opportunity to present their mutual narratives, leading to a tense and animated debate hosted by Harrisburg’s abc27.

While Democrats are struggling to maintain their slim majority in the Senate, the Pennsylvania race is among the few that could take control of the chamber.

» READ MORE: Bob Casey has a substantial lead in the Pennsylvania Senate race. But according to a up-to-date poll, Dave McCormick is still in it.

Casey, a three-term incumbent, maintains a steady lead in polls over McCormick, a former hedge fund CEO. But many voters remain undecided, and the GOP still has a path to victory if he can win over many of those who won’t start paying attention to the race until the final weeks.

Here’s what you need to know about the Casey and McCormick debate:

Career politician vs. Connecticut hedge fund CEO

McCormick, whose campaign has been aiming to link Casey to Vice President Kamala Harris since she replaced President Joe Biden on the Democratic ticket, claimed that Casey is a “rubber punch” who “voted 99% of the time with Biden and Harris.”

“He has been in the Senate for 18 years,” McCormick said. “Who is responsible for this wide open border? Who is responsible for this inflation? Bob Casey would like you to think he’s nowhere to be found.

» READ MORE: China, Pennsylvania teachers and a cult-like culture: Why Dave McCormick’s time at Bridgewater, the world’s largest hedge fund, matters for his Senate term

Meanwhile, Casey relentlessly attacked McCormick over issues arising from the Republican’s 13 years as a director at Bridgewater Associates, the world’s largest hedge fund.

Casey criticized the company’s investments in China and McCormick’s denunciations of his role in trying to prevent two women employees at the company from publicly discussing their problems with colleagues. But Casey most often returned to the fact that McCormick lived in Connecticut, where Bridgewater is headquartered, until he left the company in 2022 to unsuccessfully run for Pennsylvania’s second Senate seat.

McCormick is a native of the Keystone State and currently owns a home in Pittsburgh. However, Democrats still question whether he has fully returned to Pennsylvania.

At one point, McCormick criticized Casey for failing to prevent U.S. Steel from deciding to open a plant in Arkansas, which he believed could have been built in Allegheny County had it not been for local officials raising environmental concerns. The decision was announced in January 2022.

“Now, if I were the senior senator from Pennsylvania, I would stand behind the desk of the people of Allegheny County who received this great investment here and who received jobs here,” McCormick said.

“He was in Connecticut when this happened, so let’s be clear,” Casey said. “He has no right to talk about what should have been done in Pennsylvania.”

The inflation blame game

Casey blames inflation on corporations rapidly raising prices despite rising profits, which he calls “greedflation,” and supports legislation that would create a nationwide ban on price gouging. Other Democrats, including Harris, embraced that message during this year’s campaign.

“These large conglomerates, these large corporations, rigged these prices and drove them up to levels that we have never seen before, while at the same time making record profits,” Casey said during the debate. “This is greedflation. We can deal with this by passing a law to inflate prices.

» READ MORE: How Sen. Bob Casey Became Democrats’ Leading Communicator on ‘Greedflation’ – One of the Party’s Biggest Issues Before November

McCormick countered that the recent period of inflation was due to the massive federal spending bills passed early in the Biden administration and that Casey’s focus on inflating prices was misguided.

“When you’ve spent your entire life in public service, in elected office for 30 years, you’re like a hammer looking for a nail,” McCormick said. “The cause of inflation is politics, out of control spending by Biden, Harris and Casey.”

Economists say the cause of the rapid inflation that has hit the United States and many other countries in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic is convoluted. While increased spending likely exacerbated U.S. price increases, the root causes were larger macroeconomic factors, including supply shortages resulting from production and transportation network outages during the pandemic and rising energy costs following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Support for the reopening of Three Mile Island

Both candidates have said they support reopening Three Mile Island, a nuclear power plant near Harrisburg that was the site of a partial meltdown in 1979.

The plant has been closed since 2019, but the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is considering Constellation Energy’s proposal to bring it back online to sell the power to Microsoft for AI computing.

Casey said he has an “all of the above” stance on energy production, including nuclear energy.

“We have a strong nuclear base in Pennsylvania,” he said. “I’m glad to see activity here. We need to know more about what they are asking for.”

McCormick also said he would support reopening Three Mile Island, before quickly attacking Casey for supporting renewable energy subsidies.