HARRISBURG, Pa. — Republican David McCormick won Pennsylvania’s crucial U.S. Senate seat, as the former CEO of the world’s largest hedge fund defeated three-term Democratic Sen. Bob Casey in Tuesday’s election after having accused the outgoing president of supporting policies that led to inflation. internal unrest and war.

This state battle strengthens the Republican majority in the Senate, which they wrested from Democratic control this week.

McCormick, 59, won back a GOP seat in Pennsylvania that Republicans lost in 2022, paying off a bet party leaders made when they urged McCormick to run and consolidated support behind him.

McCormick relied on contacts in the worlds of government, politics and finance to build support for his campaign after serving as CEO of the world’s largest hedge fund and serving at the highest levels of government of former President George W. Bush.

Beating Casey shakes Pennsylvania’s Democratic establishment. Casey is the namesake of a former two-term governor and Pennsylvania’s longest-serving Democrat in the Senate. Until Tuesday, Casey had won six statewide general elections, dating back to 1996.

McCormick delivered the consistent message that Casey was an inactive and weak career politician who was a key ally of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. McCormick said he would bring leadership to the position.

McCormick also benefited from tens of millions of dollars in campaign cash from billionaires and other allies in the world of hedge funds and securities trading.

It was McCormick’s second time running, this time with a clear primary and the support of former President Donald Trump, after narrowly losing to Trump-backed Dr. Mehmet Oz in the costly seven-way primary. of 2022.

He has a long resume that includes being decorated for his military service during the Gulf War, earning a doctorate from Princeton University, running the online auction house FreeMarkets Inc. – whose name was on a skyscraper in Pittsburgh during the tech boom — and serving on the boards of prominent institutions, including Trump’s Defense Advisory Board.

He also had luggage.

He has repeatedly attempted to soften his stance against abortion rights after celebrating the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overturn the landmark 1972 Roe v. Wade decision and end a half-century of federal protection of the right to abortion. Ultimately, McCormick insisted he would oppose a federal ban on abortion and leave in place Pennsylvania’s law that allows abortion up to the 24th week of gestation.

McCormick has had to absorb accusations — first in the 2022 GOP primary, then again by Casey — that he was a wealthy upholsterer from Connecticut’s posh Gold Coast trying to buy a Senate seat. McCormick lived there until he ran for Senate in 2022, and while buying a house in Pittsburgh, he also maintained a huge house in Connecticut until a daughter-in-law graduated high school earlier this year.

McCormick, in turn, emphasized his seventh-generation roots in Pennsylvania, recalled his high school years wrestling in the towns of northern Pennsylvania – a sport that took him to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point – and being the son of two educators. His father became the first chancellor of Pennsylvania’s public university system – under Casey’s father.

Yet McCormick helped bring the Carpetbagger caricature to life by mispronouncing the name of one of Pennsylvania’s best-known local beers.

McCormick has also suffered a legion of attacks on his hedge fund’s investments, including accusations that he enriched himself at America’s expense by buying shares in Chinese companies that the federal government has come to consider later as part of Beijing’s military industrial and surveillance complex.

McCormick, meanwhile, was trying to capitalize on unrest in the Middle East and on the U.S. southern border with Mexico.

He made a bid for Jewish voters by traveling to the Israel-Gaza border, speaking to Jewish audiences across the state and claiming that Casey and the Biden administration have failed to combat anti-Semitism nor sufficiently supported Israel in the Israel-Hamas war.

At the border, he backed Trump’s promise to carry out a mass expulsion of immigrants into the country without authorization – prioritizing people with criminal records – and promised to push for US military action in Mexico to target fentanyl trafficking networks, a controversial idea born with Atout.