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.

The victory strengthens the Republican majority in the Senate, which they wrested from Democratic control this week, and is the second costliest race in the country while taking place alongside the presidential race won by Republican Donald Trump in the nation’s first battleground state.

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

In an interview on Fox News shortly after The Associated Press called the race Thursday, the Trump-backed McCormick said “people want change.”

“They are deeply upset about soaring prices, the wide open border, crime in our cities, the war on fossil fuels, and they want change and common sense leadership. That’s why I think they elected President Trump and I think that’s why they elected me,” McCormick said.

Republican strategists largely attributed McCormick’s victory to Trump’s strong performance in Pennsylvania, beating Vice President Kamala Harris by about 2% as Democrats faced headwinds like voter dissatisfaction with the inflation under President Joe Biden.

It was enough to carry McCormick to victory, they said.

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, 64, had won six statewide general elections since 1996, but he had never been on the same ballot as Trump.

While votes were still being counted, McCormick led Casey by about 31,000 votes, or half a percentage point.

Casey did not concede Thursday, and his campaign pointed to a statement from the state’s top elections official that at least 100,000 ballots remained to be counted, including provisional ballots and military and overseas ballots.

In a statement, Casey said the vote counting process must be allowed to proceed and every vote counts.

“I have dedicated my life to ensuring that the voices of Pennsylvanians are heard, whether in the Senate or in free and fair elections,” Casey said. He added: “This is what Pennsylvania deserves.”

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

It was McCormick’s second time running, this time with a clear primary and Trump’s support. He narrowly lost to Trump-backed Dr. Mehmet Oz in the costly seven-way 2022 primary.

His wealth – he will be one of the richest senators when he joins the chamber – and his connections have led him to be flagged by Republicans as someone who could both raise money for his campaign and pay his own expenses for a Senate campaign.

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

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

He campaigned energetically, often traveling by bus across the state, and appeared on stage at nearly every Trump rally in Pennsylvania, Trump’s most visited state.

McCormick was comfortable in front of television cameras, a skill he honed as a senior Treasury Department official regularly giving press briefings at the start of the 2008-09 recession and as a prominent figure in Wall Street sought after for speaking engagements.

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.

McCormick also had baggage.

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.

He also sought to allay concerns about Republican control of the Senate, saying he would not vote to end the filibuster, a Senate rule that effectively makes 60 the minimum number of votes necessary to pass a law to control the majority. .

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 graduated from 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.

McCormick criticized Casey for supporting the Biden administration’s border policies that he said had enabled illegal immigration and supporting policies that he said had allowed Iran to destabilize the Middle East.

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.