By any conventional measure, David McCormick’s pedigree is impressive.
Champion wrestler. West Point graduate. Army Ranger. PhD. from Princeton. Technical performer. Treasury officer in the administration of George W. Bush.
The Senate nominee from Pennsylvania didn’t get one more credential: MAGA Champion.
Like Republican candidates across the country, McCormick has diligently tried to pose as a Trump-style challenger, hoping he can win over enough of the former president’s supporters to win the nomination in a crowded primary.
But this transformation of MAGA was not easy. McCormick says he’s a fan of Donald Trump. But he also has a history of ruptures with the former president and of taking positions that run counter to the foundations of the Republican Party. And while he has strong ties to the state — he grew up in Bloomsburg, a city of about 15,000 along the Susquehanna River — McCormick’s job at a hedge fund with strong ties to China kept him from turning into a populist. .
In an interview, McCormick claimed that his experience with China is an advantageand his campaign is challenging the notion that he has vulnerabilities in regards to the Trump base.
“Dave is the only true America First candidate who, if elected, will work every day to restore President Trump’s growth stimulus policies, including getting our economy back on track, countering China, restoring US strength on the world stage, and ensuring security of our border,” said Jess Szymanski, spokesperson for the McCormick campaign.
“He hasn’t finished talking yet”
Until recently, McCormick was the CEO of Bridgewater Associates, a hedge fund whose fieldstone and glass headquarters is on a 22-acre wooded campus in Westport, Connecticut. has been hit hard by the changes in global trading that Bridgewater traders and analysts are trying to monetize every day.
McCormick is married to Deanna Powell, a former Trump administration official who now works for Goldman Sachs. The couple warned their friends that McCormick planned to play Trump’s views on the campaign trail — what they described as simply the cost of running in the Republican primary right now, according to two of his Wall Street business associates, who asked not to be mentioned in private conversations.
For now, McCormick has a lot of work to do, according to longtime Trump allies.
“He doesn’t have the right looks,” said Sam Nanberg, a former political adviser to Trump. He hasn’t finished speaking yet.
The lane adjacent to Trump?
McCormick may not want to completely emulate Trump. In Pennsylvania, where President Biden won by a 1.2 percentage point margin, he might be better off running on what neutral Republican consultant Christopher Nicholas called the “Trump-adjacent streak.”
McCormick’s bid could be a test of how close a candidate needs to be to Trump to get into the Trump-adjacent lane.
A former Democrat, McCormick made extensive comments about world affairs, and they weren’t always very MAGA.
In 2016 during speaking at the West Point Society in New York, he criticized “the impulse of some candidates to close our doors and leave the world to its fate.” In 2017, he described Trump’s aides as “There is no understanding of how the world works.”
IN 2018 article in The Washington Posthe supported Amy McGrath, a Democrat who would later challenge Senator Mitch McConnell in her race against Representative Andy Barr, a Republican from Kentucky.
More recently, McCormick called the January 6 riot at the Capitol “terrifying” and “a dark chapter in American history.”
new invention
What should an aspiring Republican senator do?
McCormick’s first task was to find Trump administration aides to vouch for him, including Hope Hicks, Stephen Miller and Cliff Sims, who are serving as campaign advisers. He is backed by David Urban, a West Point graduate who led the Trump campaign in Pennsylvania in 2016. Matthew Pottinger, a Chinese hawk and Trump’s deputy national security adviser, backed him up.
He then repositioned himself in Trump-friendly media such as Fox News and Washington Examiner.
IN interview with Fox News host Mark LevineMcCormick said he fought against “the weakness and the revival that you see all over the country”. He noted that he drove a Ford F-150 pickup truck around Pennsylvania to meet with voters. And although his father was the rector of the university, he made sure to mention the “family farm”, which he now owns.
Breitbart, a right-wing website founded by Steve Bannon, a former Trump aide, provided McCormick with particularly favorable coverage. There was an article citing “sources close to” McCormick that went under the heading: “Exclusive – ‘Populist Potential’: CEO of World’s Biggest Hedge Fund Plans to Pass Full MAGA in Pennsylvania Senate’s Impending Bid.” An survey McCormick cited his call for a new strategy to counter China. Another story included photos of McCormick walking along the US-Mexico border.
“We need to get back to Trump’s policies that have worked,” McCormick said in his op-ed. “Completing the border wall is the backbone of any serious plan.”
The hard part: China
McCormick has been critical of China’s trade practices for years, especially intellectual property theft, allies say. As a Treasury Department official, he called for stricter controls on the export of American technology that could be used for military purposes.
But other past comments about US-China relations are now being discussed. reporters exhumed and armed with his adversaries.
“When China prospers, America prospers,” McCormick wrote in paper 2007 published in an economic journal. “The United States must also avoid the siren song of protectionism.”
But McCormick’s bigger problem may be Bridgewater’s extensive work in China. Ray Dalio, the founder of the hedge fund, has been described as “fascinated” by the country, so much so that he modeled some of Bridgewater’s internal governance structures on “aspects of Chinese political ideology.” Wall Street Journal account.
Before leaving Bridgewater last year, McCormick told staff on a conference call that he disagreed with Dalio comparing China’s human rights record to that of a “strict parent.” quickly retold by Bloomberg. He then expressed his views in article for FoxNews.comwriting that “it is long past time for American leaders to directly confront the Chinese Communist Party.”
This was not enough to stop his opponents. The campaign of Mehmet Oz, one of his main rivals in the Senate, better known as Dr. Oz, released an advertisement accusing him of “betraying us” as a Wall Street executive and criticizing his ties to China; The Pennsylvania Democrats created a website blessedbyChina.comwith a selectively cut clip of his commentary over the years.
There are two endorsements that could help McCormick fend off these attacks, Republicans say.
One of them will be from Trump, who does not support the current candidate. The other will be from Fox News host Tucker Carlson, whose own reinvention from bow-tie conservative to fiery populist has made him one of the most influential voices on the right.
As Nanberg, a former Trump adviser, put it, “All you need is one snippet from Tucker.”
Kate Kelly contributed to the report.
What to read in the evening
What’s in a political name?
An unknown candidate who goes by the name of a well-known politician decides to run. It’s the plot of Eddie Murphy’s 1992 comedy The Extraordinary Gentleman and a subplot of the next week’s Texas primary.
Republicans voting for Texas governor on Tuesday will find Rick Perry on their ballots. Not a three-term former governor and energy secretary in the Trump administration. This is another Rick Perry campaigning as a fifth-generation Texan and Christian conservative from Parker County in north central Texas. He emailed us, praising us for being “persistent” in tracking him down, but declined to be interviewed. Attempts to contact the former governor were unsuccessful.
In politics, a name is a brand: Roosevelt, Kennedy, Clinton. For George P. Bush, whose uncle and grandfather were presidents, his famous name is both a blessing and a curse as he is running for attorney general.
“I’m the first person to admit that having a famous name at least gives me some notoriety that maybe if I didn’t have a famous name I wouldn’t get,” said Robert Kennedy Jr., a Democrat from Alabama, who won the 2018 Congressional Primary but lost the general election. Kennedy is not related to the Kennedy family of Massachusetts. He was named after his father, who was from Philadelphia.
Bob Stump was a political legend in the Western Valley of Arizona who died in 2003, shortly after over 25 years in Congress. When another Bob Stump whose legal name is actually Christopher Robert Stump – ran for Congress in 2018, the congressman’s widow did not like it. In a letter to local news outlets she accused the candidate of “misleading voters”.
This prompted the mother of candidate Bob Stump to write her own letter. Detailing a sentimental story name in her family. Her Bob Stump lost the Republican primary and didn’t respond to our requests to talk about his experience.
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