Vulnerable Pennsylvania Democratic Sen. Bob Casey seems fine with voters casting ballots for third-party foes — so long as they don’t vote for GOP rival Dave McCormick, a new ad suggests.
The Casey campaign and Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee recently rolled out a video ad titled “Four Candidates” that only crosses out his Republican challenger, implying the senator might be OK with the Libertarian and Constitution Party candidates — to help split McCormick’s vote count.
McCormick’s face is bathed in red has a big, yellow “X” over it in the final panel of the ad, whereas Libertarian Party candidate John Thomas and Constitution Party candidate Bernard Selker remain untouched — just like Casey.
The ad also notes as part of its attack on McCormick that Donald Trump criticized the “Wall Street Republican” during the party’s Pennsylvania Senate primary race in May 2022, when the former president said McCormick was “absolutely the candidate of special interests and globalists.”
“Four candidates for Senate. Who’s standing up to China?” the narrator asks in the Casey video. “It’s Bob Casey, who stood with Donald Trump to put tariffs on China to protect American jobs.
“Dave McCormick: He sold us out to China getting rich by investing in China’s military and investing in China’s biggest fentanyl producer,” the narrator adds.
Trump had backed celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz in the 2022 GOP Senate primary — but endorsed McCormick this year in April.
Republicans and Democrats have both tried to make use of so-called “spoiler” candidates in recent elections to put them over the top.
This year, for example, independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is remaining on the ballot in the swing states of Michigan and Wisconsin to try to pull voters away from Democratic nominee Kamala Harris — while publicly endorsing Trump and urging his supporters to vote for the former president.
Libertarian Party 2024 presidential candidate Chase Oliver ran in the 2020 Georgia Senate race and became a spoiler for Republican candidate Herschel Walker that November, sending the contest to a January runoff.
Casey, 64, has been bucking his party’s incumbent president, Joe Biden, in other ads, breaking with Dems on the issue of fracking and showcasing his support for Trump’s tariffs on China.
“Casey bucked Biden to protect fracking, and he sided with Trump to end NAFTA and put tariffs on China to stop them from cheating,” a Pennsylvania female voter said in a Democratic ad last month.
Fracking for natural gas is a critical industry in the Keystone State, and public polling shows the economy remains the most important issue among voters, followed by immigration and abortion rights.
Both campaigns have also traded barbs over the candidates’ degree of investment in China over the past two decades, with Casey having overseen as a state treasurer some Pennsylvania pensions that invested in China and McCormick presiding over the buying up of shares in Chinese companies as the CEO of the hedgefund Bridgewater Associates.
Casey currently has a 2.4-percentage-point lead against McCormick, 59, the day before voters head to the polls, according to the RealClearPolitics average of recent surveys.
In response to the new ad declining to attack to his non-GOP opponents and embracing Trump again, McCormick spokeswoman Elizabeth Gregory posted on X: “Siri, show me what ‘desperate’ looks like.”
Reps for the Casey campaign did not respond to a Post request for comment.
