GOP Senate nominee McCormick has his moment at the Republican National Convention

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David McCormick made his case for election to the U.S. Senate at the Republican National Convention Tuesday night, telling the audience gathered in Milwaukee’s Fiserv Forum that the election this year is “the most important election of our lifetimes.”

“My friends, the choice this November is clear,” he said. “It’s a choice between strength and weakness, a choice between America’s greatness or its sad, disgraceful, decline.”

He argued that he should be elected in November being a “seventh-generation Pennsylvanian, a graduate of West Point Military Academy, and former Army wrestler.” He asserted that he “created hundreds of jobs in Pennsylvania” during his time as a business leader in Pittsburgh. McCormick did not mention that he also served as an economic advisor in the administration of George W. Bush.

‘Surreal’

McCormick, who is running against incumbent Senator Bob Casey, was in the audience in Butler, Pennsylvania, when a sniper attempted to shoot former President Donald Trump. On the convention stage, he referred to the incident saying, “I witnessed firsthand… President Trump’s remarkable strength and resolve in a terrifying, terrifying, and unpredictable moment. The president rose brilliantly to the challenge.”

McCormick was scheduled to speak at the event in Butler, just before the would-be assassin made his attempt on Trump’s life. McCormick, who was seated fewer than 20 feet from the dais, recounted that experience to WHYY News shortly after he gave his address.

“The president invited me up on the stage and then I started to get up and go through security,” he said. “He goes, ‘No, no, I’ll call you up in a little bit.’ And then the shots came a minute or two after that.”

A combat vet, McCormick “surmised pretty quickly” that it was a shooting.

“Everybody got down and we saw the president dive in front of us and sadly, someone terribly mortally wounded behind us,” he said. “It was surreal. It was a frightening moment that makes you realize by an inch, we avoided the unthinkable.”

State of the Race

In his address, McCormick called Casey a “do nothing out of touch, liberal career politician.”

“For 18 years, Bob Casey has been warming a chair and drawing a paycheck,” he said. “And when he votes, he votes for Joe Biden’s tired old ideas.”

McCormick has said that his campaign is tied to Trump’s campaign and that he expected Trump’s success in Pennsylvania to raise his own prospect of victory. However, while Trump is regularly polling ahead of President Joe Biden in the Keystone State, McCormick continues to trail Casey by several points, even by as much as double digits.

McCormick also appears to be falling behind in fundraising, according to campaign finance reports the campaigns released last week. Those showed that, in the second quarter of this year, Casey raised more than $8 million — 80% of which were contributions of $50 or less, according to the campaign. McCormick, on the other hand, appears to have raised just over $6.6 million, according to the campaign’s quarterly report for the FEC, a number which includes over $2 million that McCormick personally “loaned” to the campaign.

McCormick has faced criticism recently for his time as the CEO of Pittsburgh-based software company Freemarkets and at Bridgewater Associates, including investigative reports about his claim to have “created hundreds of jobs” and that he invested in Chinese fentanyl companies before calling for a ban on those same imports.

In response to McCormick’s speech, Pennsylvania Democratic Party spokesperson TaNisha Cameron said in a statement sent to WHYY News, “David McCormick tried to hide behind false attacks because he knows he can’t defend his record of investing millions in Chinese military companies, supporting an abortion ban with no exceptions for rape or incest, and funding China’s largest fentanyl producer.”

‘A Real Guy’

None of those criticisms bother Donna Cosmello, a delegate here in Milwaukee who serves as chair of the Susquehanna Republican Party, who said that such things are just part of doing business and that McCormick is “a real guy” who she knows as a neighbor who cares about Pennsylvania.

“Businessmen have business,” she told WHYY News. “They went after Donald Trump for whatever he did with his finances. You can’t tell me other billionaires don’t do the same thing.”

For Cosmello, the bigger issue is local energy production, which she calls economically necessary for her region. She criticized Democrats for focusing on green energy projects.

“Bob Casey’s been to Susquehanna County once,” she said. “He doesn’t like Marcellus Shale, which is very active in our county. He wants electric cars on our farms. That stuff doesn’t work in rural Pennsylvania. We need someone that understands rural Pennsylvania.”

Cosmello talked about being invited to attend the fateful Saturday in Butler, but she declined in order to prepare for the trip to Milwaukee instead.

“As delegates and alternates, we all were asked to go, but we were flying out the next day and I was at my sister’s getting ready to leave and I got a phone call and immediately turned on the TV and I just thought it was so sad,” she said. “It was — what’s the word I want to say — useless. Like what was he thinking? And you think about it, if [Trump] didn’t turn to look at Dave McCormick, maybe it would’ve been different.”