Pennsylvania has come into laser focus in the 2024 election as the must-win state of the presidential election. But further down the ballot is another race in the battleground state – one that could decide whether Democrats are able to hold on to a one-seat majority in the Senate.
With the party bracing to lose a seat in West Virginia and incumbent Jon Tester’s prospects looking grim in Montana, a lot of attention and money is flowing into the Senate race between Democrat Bob Casey and Republican Dave McCormick in Pennsylvania.
Casey, who is seeking a fourth term in the Senate, hopes to turn one of Democrats’ largest vulnerabilities – the cost of living – into a campaign asset. He has focused much of his messaging on rising prices, a primary concern for voters, and the so-called “greedflation” of large corporations. He accuses those companies of gouging consumers during the high inflationary period of Joe Biden’s early presidency and warns that McCormick will not take action to hold them accountable.
But McCormick holds Democrats like Casey and Kamala Harris responsible for those same high prices because of their “wasteful government spending”, and he is betting that voters will, too.
Democrats and Republicans alike appear keenly aware of the importance of the contest, as outside spending groups have dropped tens of millions of dollars into Pennsylvania and prominent members of both parties have traveled to the state for campaign events. Appearing at a recent event alongside Casey in the Philadelphia suburb of Ambler, Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts reminded supporters of the high stakes of the race.
“This is what control of the Senate is all about right now,” Warren told supporters. “If [Republicans] win on November 5, they are going to help the rich get richer and let everyone else eat dirt … We are all, as Democrats, in this fight because we will not let them take back the Senate.”
A tipping-point race and state
Senate Democrats’ difficult calculus this year has only underscored the significance of Casey’s re-election bid, as his loss could fortify a new Republican majority in the Senate. Republicans appear comfortable with their nominee in McCormick, a former hedge-fund CEO and senior government official who narrowly missed out on a Senate nomination in 2022.
That year, the celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz won the Republican primary by 0.1 points after securing the endorsement of Donald Trump, who repeatedly attacked McCormick on the campaign trail. This time Trump has thrown his support behind McCormick, and the two appear to have made amends, appearing together at events across Pennsylvania. But McCormick has continued to distance himself from some of Trump’s most controversial stances, like denying the results of the 2020 presidential election.
“One of the things I had said before was that President Biden was our president. He had won the election. I don’t believe the election was stolen,” McCormick recently told CNN. “So President Trump and I don’t agree on everything, but we agree on a lot of things.”
As of now, Trump’s pitch seems to be resonating more with Pennsylvania voters compared with McCormick’s. According to an average of Pennsylvania polls from the Hill/Decision Desk HQ, Harris leads Trump by just 0.9 points in the state while Casey has an advantage of 4.0 points over McCormick, as of Tuesday.
The neck-and-neck race between Harris and Trump for Pennsylvania’s 19 electoral votes could determine the winner of the presidential race, a fact that both nominees seem all too aware of. In 2020, Biden beat Trump in Pennsylvania by just a point.
“If we win Pennsylvania, we win the whole thing,” Trump said at a rally in the state last week. “It’s very simple.”
Asked by the Guardian why he appears to be in a slightly stronger polling position in Pennsylvania compared with Harris, Casey sidestepped.
“The last thing I want to try to do is be a pundit on the polls,” Casey said in Ambler. “Here’s, I think, the reality. I think both races are going to be very close, but I think the people of our state know it’s a very, very clear choice. It’s never been clearer.”
Greedflation versus Bobflation
At his event with Warren in Ambler, a town about 30 miles from Philadelphia, Casey focused his attention on the rising prices that have plagued families in Pennsylvania and across the country. Addressing hundreds of supporters in a college campus auditorium , Casey blamed large corporations for the high inflation seen since 2020.
Accusing those corporations of taking advantage of customers, Casey called for investigations of companies and a federal bill targeting price-gouging before turning his attention to McCormick.
“When I brought this issue up, he criticized me for bringing it up,” Casey said. “He wants to excuse price-gouging. I want to hold these companies accountable and make sure that we have a fighting chance against these corporations.”
Casey painted a very deliberate picture of why US prices had increased by roughly 20% since 2019, a statistic that McCormick frequently cites in attack ads. The senator referenced a report compiled by his office showing that corporate profits went up 75% in a two-year period when inflation went up by 14%.
“We’re talking about the biggest conglomerates in the world that are jacking up prices with impunity, and we’re not going to take it any more,” Casey told supporters. “We’re going to fight back and hold them accountable.”
“Greedflation” has become one of Casey’s most repeated talking points, surfacing in the senator’s campaign ads as well as his speech at the Democratic national convention in August, and the message has shown some signs of success. A poll conducted by the Philadelphia Inquirer, the New York Times, and Siena College showed Casey leading McCormick by 6 points when Pennsylvania voters were asked who they trusted to handle the economy, even as Trump led Harris by 4 points on the same issue.
Lori Morrissey, a 64-year-old voter from Harleysville who attended Casey’s event with Warren, said she has even started posting to social media about the issue.
“I see the profits of a lot of these corporations, especially consumer products, and it’s outrageous,” Morrissey said. “And they don’t seem to be ticking down. I actually think people need to start protesting outside of these chain supermarkets and letting them know.”
Beth Staab, a Democrat who serves on the Montgomery county board of supervisors and attended Casey’s event, hopes that the senator’s messaging is sinking in even as many voters remain frustrated with price increases.
“We need to break through, because there’s so many people that think, ‘Oh, it’s just inflation, inflation,’ and it’s not,” Staab said.
As Casey and Warren rallied supporters, McCormick was on the other side of the state, meeting with workers affected by the planned closure of a glass factory in Charleroi. The closure of the factory, located about 30 miles south of Pittsburgh, is expected to cost Charleroi more than 300 jobs.
“A lot of the challenges we’re having right here in Charleroi and right here across our commonwealth are due to poor leadership,” McCormick told the workers. “We’ve had too much onerous regulation, and Bob Casey’s not done anything about it.”
McCormick has come up with his own term to explain rising prices: “Bobflation.” A pro-McCormick website, Bobflation.com, features a “Casey cost calculator” that allows visitors to “see how much more your Pennsylvania favorites will cost you this year” compared with 2019. McCormick’s campaign ads accuse Harris and Casey of having “recklessly spent trillions” while downplaying concerns about inflation.
“Casey is a weak rubber stamp who voted for trillions of wasteful government spending, which sent the cost of living skyrocketing,” said Elizabeth Gregory, a spokesperson for McCormick.
Inflation has subsided in the US, as the consumer price index rose at an annual rate of 2.5% in September. That reading, which marked the lowest annual CPI level since February 2021, paved the way for the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates for the first time in four years.
Despite that progress, the cost of living remains top of mind for voters. According to a survey conducted by Monmouth University last month, 62% of Pennsylvania voters name inflation as one of their top two priorities this year, making it the most common response.
“Covid-19, the pandemic – all of that is still with us, the impact of it,” said Roxanne Anderson, a 55-year-old voter from Norristown who attended Casey’s event. “So we still need that support.”
Anderson said she did not trust Republicans to lead on the economy, as she considered them “out of touch”. But unfortunately for Casey, McCormick has hefty financial backing to spread his economic message to Pennsylvania voters in the last month before election day.
An expensive sprint to the finish
Even as Democratic congressional candidates across the country have benefited from an infusion of cash since Harris launched her presidential campaign in July, Casey finds himself at a notable financial disadvantage heading into the home stretch of his race against McCormick.
Casey had raised almost twice as much as his opponent by the end of June, according to OpenSecrets, but McCormick has benefited from significant outside spending. AdImpact reported last week that McCormick’s allies have reserved $22.7m more in future ad spends compared to Casey’s team. That gap puts Casey at the largest spending disadvantage of any Democrat running in one of the seven most closely watched Senate races.
One Super Pac in particular, the Keystone Renewal Pac, has provided a substantial boon for McCormick. The group, which has received contributions from Republican mega-donors such as Ken Griffin and Paul Singer, has already spent $37.3m to promote McCormick’s campaign. The investment makes Keystone Renewal Pac the highest-spending single-candidate Pac involved in a Senate race of this election cycle so far, according to OpenSecrets’ data.
Casey has tried to turn McCormick’s financial backers into a campaign issue, attacking the former hedge fund CEO as a “bag man for billionaires”.
“He made a lot of money with his Wall Street friends,” Casey told reporters in Ambler. “Now he wants to go to Washington and support those billionaire tax cuts and corporate tax cuts that wrecked our economy and jacked up the debt. We shouldn’t do that.”
In part because of the deluge of pro-McCormick money flowing into Pennsylvania in the final weeks before election day, Casey is clearly not getting too comfortable in the race. But when the last ballot is counted, Casey still expects Pennsylvania to send him back to Washington for another term.
“It’s a very clear choice, just on rights and on these basic debates we’ve had for years – on tax policy, on healthcare and so much else,” Casey said in Ambler. “And I think people know they have a stake in this election. I think it’ll be close – but I think we’re going to win.”
