(The Center Square) — If Pennsylvania voters weren’t sick of political attack ads, Thursday night’s U.S. Senate debate between Democrat Bob Casey and Republican Dave McCormick was an absolute feast.
The hour-long debate was a director’s cut of barbs back and forth between the Democratic incumbent and the Republican challenging trying to unseat him. If viewers missed the few moments where a substantive policy discussion took place, they could be forgiven.
Casey accused McCormick of “lifting up (America’s) adversaries” through his investments when he served as CEO of hedge fund Bridgewater Associates, while McCormick summed up Casey as a career politician: “anti-business, anti-success, and he’s a liar.”
Still, the candidates revealed a few commonalities: both declared support for and the need to back up Israel; both supported the revival of Three Mile Island and nuclear energy; and both supported “targeted” tariffs and blocking the sale of U.S. Steel to the Japanese company Nippon Steel.
“The key for me are those steelworker jobs in the Mon Valley and the jobs in Pittsburgh,” Casey said in explaining his opposition. “I want to make sure, at all costs, those steelworker jobs stay here. They’re union jobs — I don’t like what I’ve been hearing from U.S. Steel in the last few years about moving those jobs to Arkansas, a non-union state. That’s my prime concern … We cannot lose those jobs, it would be devastating for the Mon Valley and for Pennsylvania.”
McCormick, however, cited national security concerns for his opposition and lambasted Casey for not doing more to make a U.S. Steel investment happen that instead went to Arkansas.
“The reason was because the Allegheny County government blocked the new project on environmental grounds. If I was the senior senator from Pennsylvania, I would be standing on the desk of the people in Allegheny County, getting that great investment and those jobs here,” McCormick said. “This is the kind of failure of leadership that’s taking Pennsylvania in the wrong direction.”
Throughout the night, both candidates accused the other of helping China, either through McCormick’s investment decisions at Bridgewater or with Casey’s support of solar energy subsidies, where Chinese companies lead.
They also accused each other of failures of leadership on border security and abortion. Casey accused McCormick of not standing up to former president Donald Trump to support a border bill while McCormick criticized Casey for not visiting the border and supporting Vice President Kamala Harris.
The public was less than impressed with the state of the debate.
“This Casey-McCormick debate is an absolute embarrassment,” tweeted Sam Chen, host of the Pennsylvania news show Face the Issues and a political strategist. “I expected it to be better and more substantive than the #VPDebate earlier this week, but it’s nothing more than a regurgitation of their attack ads with some political inside baseball thrown in.”
Near the end of the debate, Casey pitched himself as a leader with a strong record.
“Every day as a United States senator, I’ve gone to work for the people of our state, fighting for working families, workers themselves, fighting for our children, seniors, people with disabilities, our veterans, and I’ve got a strong record on all those issues,” Casey said. “I’ve also fought to lower costs, to invest in strategies that will secure the border, and to invest in the middle class … the voters in this state have a very clear choice: they can vote for a candidate who’s gonna vote against union rights, women’s rights, workers’ rights, and voting rights — or they can vote for me who’s gonna protect all those rights and fight every day for those families and win like I have.”
McCormick’s end-pitch, however, argued Pennsylvania needed change.
“Our commonwealth is in trouble: We have wide-open borders, we have a weak economy, America is going in the wrong direction, sky-rocketing prices that are putting enormous pressure on most families,” he said. “I’m a 7th-generation Pennslyvanian, I’m a political outsider, I’m a businessman, I’m a combat veteran from Iraq … Bob Casey is the problem. Bob Casey’s a weak leader, a career politician — Bob Casey went to the Senate to change Washington and Washington changed Bob Casey.”
