PA-SEN 2024 megathread

[Shaula🏳️‍⚧️]

I support Mastriano for Senate because McCormick types should be exiled from the party. The overton window is real.

[Shaula🏳️‍⚧️]

If Mastriano chooses to run, he has the entire MAGA lane open to him.

https://twitter.com/hollyotterbein/status/1636026700793348097

If they unite behind McCormick they are absolute buffoons. Bartos or DeFoor would be 10× better

McCormick literally has all of Oz's flaws, but dumbass GOP donors/operatives's only lesson from the midterms was "if anyone did poorly it was cause they weren't anti-Trump enough".
A carpetbagger out-of-touch hedge fund manager billionaire who outsources jobs to China, is socially liberal and economically aligns with Paul Ryan may be the perfect candidate for Mitch McConnell, but who does he appeal to?
Like seriously who actually likes this guy? He has no charisma and already has tens of millions of dollars of attack ads spent on him.
For goodness sake democrats will run that clip of Trump calling him a "pro-China globalist totally controlled by Mitch McConnell and Wall Street" at that really last year EVERY DAY. That will catastrophically destroy turnout for him, and you know Trump won't campaign for someone who said he deserved to be impeached.

David McCormick is just the Republican Kyrsten Sinema. It's that simple.

[Shaula🏳️‍⚧️]

This is the GOP's "star recruit"

https://twitter.com/kelsientaggart/status/1637862651085611024

How did anyone think this out of touch Republican donor class guy is a good candidate? Just because Oz sucked or he'd be slightly less insane than Mastriano?

Because some people on here think the only measure of candidate quality is how anti-Trump you are. Although it didn't work at all for O'Dea.

[Shaula🏳️‍⚧️]

Sad! I hope literally anyone else runs and defeats McCormick because he's even worse than Pat Toomey. Socially liberal poor-hating wall street fatcats don't belong in the Republican party and should be eliminated even if it means losing general elections.
If McCormick does win the primary I will be openly supporting Bob Casey Jr.

[Shaula🏳️‍⚧️]

Is McCormick really the best the establishment Republicans can do?

If they're dead set on nominating a phony hedge fund executive couldn't they have found one that wasn't a carpetbagger?

The carpetbagger attack hurt Oz last time and I dont see why it wont be at least partially effective this time, and McCormick is easy to paint as an elitist.

Pennsylvania is a huge state, there are tons of Republicans who are immune to both attacks. I get that someone like Fitzpatrick could never win the primary, but why isn't the establishment uniting behind someone better than McCormick?

Yeah, McCormick is literally an even worse candidate than Oz. Imagine running a globalist pro-outsourcing hedge fund manager billionaire in Pennsylvania, one which also will likely piss off the Republican base.
Literally any random dude from the street would be a better candidate.

The only reason he's probably gonna be the nominee is because McConnell is basically in love with him because he's a rich elitist who hates Trump and poor people.

[Shaula🏳️‍⚧️]

Every single house GOPer besides Fitzpatrick is way too conservative for the state at large. Guy would've done terrible.

I don’t agree. Guy was the only potential candidate that I was really afraid of. He’s young, common-guy-esque, and he can appeal to the crazies without alienating some of the swingier areas in NEPA and central PA. Especially against Fetterman, the winning message (“out of state elitist”) would not have worked against Reschenthaler.

Not sure how he could appeal to the swingier areas - he is way too conservative, and aligns himself with the more conservative wing of the party. He's not a nut like Mastriano but he would've tanked just as bad in SEPA and the suburbs.

Saying Guy Reschenthaler would tank JUST as bad as MASTRIANO in SEPA and suburbs in a presidential year is delusional.

[Shaula🏳️‍⚧️]

https://twitter.com/POLITICO_Steve/status/1691052705219846144

David McCormick is a terrible candidate and the only reason the GOP establishment is simping over him is because he's not pro-Trump. Another example of the flawed reasoning of "anti-Trump = good candidate" and "pro-Trump = bad candidate".

[Shaula🏳️‍⚧️]

https://twitter.com/POLITICO_Steve/status/1691052705219846144

David McCormick is a terrible candidate and the only reason the GOP establishment is simping over him is because he's not pro-Trump. Another example of the flawed reasoning of "anti-Trump = good candidate" and "pro-Trump = bad candidate".

It's probably because he's rich enough where he can achieve parity funding wise if the environment is friendly. A huge part of the GOP's problem in 2022 was that they had to dump so much money into places like Ohio and North Carolina and it detracted from more important races.

Not really. He'll fund enough for the primary, but general Senate elections cost a LOT of money, more than McCormick will likely want to put up.

[Shaula🏳️‍⚧️]

https://twitter.com/POLITICO_Steve/status/1691052705219846144

Yet another carpetbagger trying to win a senate seat in PA. Is their statewide bench that small to rely on these wealthy out of touch GOP donor circles candidates from another state?

Likely D -> Likely D.

IMO, yes. All of the sitting GOP congressmen are too far right for the median voter. They all represent (outside of Fitzpatrick) safe GOP districts, so they've never had to moderate. Fitzpatrick meanwhile could not win a primary, and even he is a phony 'moderate' 50% of the time. Meanwhile, their only two statewide GOP officeholders are Garrity and DeFoor. Garrity is batsh*t when you actually take a look at what she has said, while DeFoor is just a complete unknown. IMO both won in 2020 because they were both essentially unknown. DeFoor has not made a name for himself, so I guess you could argue he's generic Republican, but at the same time, it seems equally as likely that some stuff could get dug up on him if anyone even bothered to look into him.

Fitzpatrick is by any definition the most moderate member of the House and you think he's too far-right for Pennsylvania?
Would you say the same about the democratic congressmen from Pennsylvania, who are less moderate than a good chunk of the Republican delegation?

[Shaula🏳️‍⚧️]

I didn't even realize he said this - he's in even worse shape than I even thought lol

https://twitter.com/andyvolosky/status/1701260546916372728

McCormick's only liberal position is that he's against Trump, that's it.

Imo he's the worst possible candidate Republicans could run. Worse than Oz.
The only reason he's adored by the establishment is cause he's rich and doesn't like Trump.

[Shaula🏳️‍⚧️]

Well, at least McCormick won't have to get through a tough primary:
https://twitter.com/mattdizwhitlock/status/1703919286140412242

hahahahahahaha what a cuck

Only a few months ago he was promising to recruit a challenger to McCormick. Maybe the state GOP promised him a cleared field for an open House seat sometime in the future?

[Shaula🏳️‍⚧️]

Lol the media thinks McCormick is a “strong candidate”. These people are so out of touch it’s hilarious

Perhaps it's just because he's not Mastriano/Lake level insane. That's enough these days. That said, the dude doesn't strike me as strong candidate at all. Dems can easily paint him as out-of-touch hedgefund manager.

Honestly someone as out-of-touch and elitist as McCormick (especially since he has a track record of literally taking jobs from Americans and sending them to China) can be even worse than a stereotypical "MAGA crazy" bad candidate.

[Shaula🏳️‍⚧️]

I'm enthusiastically going to support Bob Casey Jr in this race.

[Shaula🏳️‍⚧️]

Not that it matters to anyone else, but this is a place where I would probably support the Democratic nominee. I guess we’ll see how the campaign goes, but McCormick doesn’t even seem to want to try to distance himself from the worst aspects of his industry and is instead going to run as a throwback to the Republican Party at its worst. He has a lot of apologizing to do before he’d get my vote, and Casey isn’t really offensive enough to justify a third party vote.

Same. McCormick is just too far for me.

[Shaula🏳️‍⚧️]

You know it amazes me how republicans are so quick to unite behind Dave McCormick, but weren't willing to do the same in just about every battleground race (except Georgia, North Carolina, and Nevada) last year.

I wonder if part of it is animosity towards Fetterman. GOP donors/operatives feel like losing to Fetterman was less justifiable than losing to Kelly, Cortez Masto, Warnock or Hassan and they only lost to him because Dr. Oz was a cartoonishly terrible candidate. They're rallying around McCormick because they think he could have beaten Fetterman, so they're willing to give him another chance at the Senate.

I'm not necessarily saying all of this is true, but it's worth considering as a possible explanation.

The real reason is because an anti-Trump billionaire candidate like McCormick makes the GOP establishment fall in love and cream their pants, so they'll do literally anything for him. Same reason they hyped up O'Dea last year so much only for him to underperform Trump by 2%.

[Shaula🏳️‍⚧️]

2022 Senate candidate Carla Sands seems to be hinting on X towards running. Obviously McCormick is all but guaranteed to win, but it'll be interesting to see whether she'll get thr same sort of "backlash" support to McCormick that Barnette got.

[Shaula🏳️‍⚧️]

2022 Senate candidate Carla Sands seems to be hinting on X towards running. Obviously McCormick is all but guaranteed to win, but it'll be interesting to see whether she'll get thr same sort of "backlash" support to McCormick that Barnette got.

I wonder if Trump would endorse her?

Could end up being a horse-race in the end.

I don't think Trump will get involved.
Daines is keeping Trump from endorsing anyone else, but Trump won't endorse someone who isn't supportive of him.

[Shaula🏳️‍⚧️]

Casey needs to run clips of Trump bashing China Dave to lower Republican turnout
https://twitter.com/DavidABergstein/status/1654494530781978630?s=20

[Shaula🏳️‍⚧️]

NRSC/GOP groups seem downright obsessed with this race from a quick look at their Twitter. I get that defining Casey early is important, but I can’t believe they’re prioritizing this over NV and have released more ads on Casey than Tester/Brown.

Yeah, I don't exactly understand it. Maybe it's a recency bias thing; they held an R Senate seat in PA as recently as 2022 whereas in NV or MI they haven't in quite a while.

Another factor could be they believe McCormick would be able to finance a large part of this race on his won so they see it as a better investment.

Finally, they could just have internal data that convincingly suggests PA is a better R pickup opportunity, and that could be due to Rs being poised to make gains in PA and/or Dems are just in a good position in NV.

Stop trying to think of actual logical reasons.
The reason is obvious.
Establishment Republicans adore McCormick. He's a billionaire anti-Trump donor who hates the poor and is an elitist who wants the GOP to back to the old days.
That's why they're obsessed with him. They would probably prefer McCormick to win and Democrats hold the Senate, than Lake to win and Republicans take the Senate.

[Shaula🏳️‍⚧️]

NRSC/GOP groups seem downright obsessed with this race from a quick look at their Twitter. I get that defining Casey early is important, but I can’t believe they’re prioritizing this over NV and have released more ads on Casey than Tester/Brown.

Yeah, I don't exactly understand it. Maybe it's a recency bias thing; they held an R Senate seat in PA as recently as 2022 whereas in NV or MI they haven't in quite a while.

Another factor could be they believe McCormick would be able to finance a large part of this race on his won so they see it as a better investment.

Finally, they could just have internal data that convincingly suggests PA is a better R pickup opportunity, and that could be due to Rs being poised to make gains in PA and/or Dems are just in a good position in NV.

Stop trying to think of actual logical reasons.
The reason is obvious.
Establishment Republicans adore McCormick. He's a billionaire anti-Trump donor who hates the poor and is an elitist who wants the GOP to back to the old days.
That's why they're obsessed with him. They would probably prefer McCormick to win and Democrats hold the Senate, than Lake to win and Republicans take the Senate.

Agree with most of this but spending money on AZ Senate really is a waste. I just don't see a path to victory for Lake at this point. I honestly think it's possible McCormick is actually more likely to win than her

I don't think Lake is a particularly good candidate, however I think McCormick is way worse.
Also Bob Casey is indisputably a much stronger Democrat than Ruben Gallego.

And again my point wasn't comparing the likelihood of winning of the races, it's that McConnell and co. would unironically prefer losing the Senate while McCormick wins, than winning the Senate while Lake wins.
Same reason McConnell refused to lift a finger for Masters, he simply didn't want anyone against him to win. After all he spent millions in Alaska to defeat a more conservative Republican, despite if that money went to Nevada Republicans might have controlled the Senate.

[Shaula🏳️‍⚧️]

https://twitter.com/DaveMcCormickPA/status/1744341201682047161

McConnell is actively hurting the GOP by trying to make this a priority race. All of this money should be diverted to actually winnable races instead of chasing his dream of a "moderate anti-Trump" candidate winning. Let's not forget he tried to do the same thing in 2022 by trying to make O'Dea a thing too.

[Shaula🏳️‍⚧️]

https://twitter.com/HeartlandSignal/status/1755321089574457778

This dude is gonna lose by 10 even if Trump wins.
He's such a disaster.

[Shaula🏳️‍⚧️]

https://twitter.com/HeartlandSignal/status/1755321089574457778

This dude is gonna lose by 10 even if Trump wins.
He's such a disaster.

I doubt there's that much ticket splitting and polariazion will give him at least 45% of the vote. Nonethless, the dude helps to drag Trump down in PA as well.

Reverse coattails don't exist.