PA-SEN 2024 megathread

[Vosem]

There's a tiny part of me that thinks this is unfortunate; Mastriano would've lost a head-to-head primary to McCormick and the contrast would've been very helpful. In general, Republicans who beat high-profile further-right primary opponents in 2022 tended to overperform (even when they themselves were too far to the right for their constituency -- consider Lee Zeldin beating Andrew Giuliani here).

That said, McCormick should be able to sew up the nomination now and will be able to personally outspend Casey. The most recent poll (which, if anything, had some modestly unfavorable assumptions for Republicans) had him down only 5 in spite of a name recognition shortfall. Clearly a winnable race in an environment as good or better than 2020.

I’m not that surprised that Mastriano decided not to run. When he ran for Governor in 2022, he didn’t have to give up his state senate seat. If he ran for U.S. Senate this year, he’d have to give up his seat. So why make a long shot (at best) run against Bob Casey when you could instead likely win re-election to the seat you currently hold?

I believe he had also intimidated that he would take the primary performance of his chosen state Supreme Court candidate, Patricia McCullough, as an indicator of his popularity in the PAGOP. McCullough did better-than-expected to some extent, but she still lost 46-54 to a more moderate candidate, so that can't have been a strong sign.

[Vosem]

The fact that the GOP thinks McCormick is a good recruit is more telling than anything here. Nominating him against Casey is tantamount to surrendering this Senate seat entirely, as far as I am concerned.

Even stranger is McConnell treating him like the best pickup opportunity that isn't WV/OH/MT. AZ/NV aside, are they that bearish on Wisconsin or the Michigan open seat?

MI/WI haven't really had a moment like PA-2020, when you had nobody Republicans who essentially didn't run campaigns beating serious Democrats in a D+5 national environment by comfortable margins. If you think Oz/Mastriano were uniquely weak -- and they were, although for different reasons* -- then maybe PA really is the fourth likeliest pickup opportunity after the obvious ones. My guess would be NV, though.

Casey normally runs about 4 points ahead of whatever the Democratic baseline is -- he was 4 points ahead of Obama in 2012, and then 4 points ahead of House Democrats in 2018 -- but he's never been treated by Republicans as a frontline target, so you could always have a Bill Nelson moment. He's also never run with Trump on the ballot, and in general Republican challengers tend to out-perform Trump.

I continue to be generically skeptical of carpetbagging as an attack on candidates**, which I think very rarely works at all and which can always be easily defused by veterans. I guess I haven't seen much of McCormick leaning into his Gulf War service, but he really should be doing that. Also it's a risky line of attack for congressional incumbents, because it's basically always easy for a motivated person to find evidence that they actually live in Virginia whenever Congress is in session and then present that as "they've lost touch".***

*Mastriano in the general populist way which misunderstands what Republican voters care about, Oz in a much more unique way where he was one of the most hated Senate candidates of the last few cycles.
**If there is anywhere it works, though, then it's PA, which either has the largest percentage of residents born in-state or is second to WV. Notably WV Democrats have had some notable over-performances running against people obviously not from the state, but Republican primary voters have just absolutely never cared, anywhere -- which is interesting to me.
***Incidentally this worked for Casey against Santorum back in the day, so maybe Casey is particularly inclined to try this line of attack again. I really don't think it generally works, though.