WASHINGTON (AP) — David McCormick had a clear explanation for why his fellow Republican, Dr. Mehmet Oz lost a critical Senate seat in Pennsylvania: Voters saw the celebrity on daytime television as an interloper from New Jersey with limited ties to the state he hoped to represent.
“People want to know that the person they’re voting for ‘gets it,'” McCormick, who narrowly lost to Oz in a GOP primary, said in March when asked to offer a postmortem of the general election defeat. “And part of ‘getting it’ is understanding that you just didn’t get in yesterday.”
As Republicans aim to secure the one seat they need to recapture the Senate in next year’s election, McCormick is a top recruit. And before his anticipated campaign, he tries to avoid Oz’s fate, often pointing to his upbringing in Pennsylvania, his ownership of a home in Pittsburgh, and a family farm near Bloomsburg.
“I live in Pennsylvania,” McCormick said during a March appearance on Texas Senator Ted Cruz’s podcast.
But the reality is more complex. Although McCormick has a home in Pittsburgh, a review of public records, real estate listings and footage from recent interviews shows that he still lives on Connecticut’s “Gold Coast,” one of the densest concentrations of wealth in America. The former hedge fund CEO is renting a $16 million mansion in Westport with a 1,500-bottle wine cellar, an elevator and a “private waterfront resort” overlooking Long Island Sound.
The trappings of a wealthy enclave, far outside of Pennsylvania, contrast starkly with the political identity McCormick has sought to cultivate, which emphasizes his rack-hunting upbringing, his military service, and his desire to serve his home state.
Whether voters’ concerns will be tested again, McCormick should formally launch a campaign to unseat Democratic three-term Senator Bob Casey in the 2024 election, which will help define partisan control of the chamber. Recent Senate history suggests that even favored sons can be stabbed when loose ties to home become a campaign issue.
Chris Borick, a political science professor at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, said McCormick “has more legitimate connections to Pennsylvania than Mehmet Oz.” But he questioned the decision to spend a lot of time out of state, especially given the decisive role residency played in the 2022 matchup between Oz and Democratic Senator John Fetterman.
“He worked for Wall Street a lot of the time and lived in Connecticut,” Borick said of McCormick. “There’s nothing wrong with that choice — unless you want to be a US Senator from Pennsylvania.”
He added, “As someone who is aware that he has to face this, it’s questionable not to really dedicate yourself.”
A spokeswoman for McCormick, Elizabeth Gregory, declined to make him available for an interview and would not say how much of his time he spends at his Connecticut mansion, which also features a spa, swimming pool and heated pavilion in an area real estate is listed. describing it as a “summer playground of America’s wealthiest families.”
“Dave has been his home in Pennsylvania for 30 years and has served our country outside of Pennsylvania for another 13 years,” she said. “It’s the place he sent letters back to when he served in Iraq and the place where three of his daughters were born. ”
She said, “While he has a residence in Connecticut while his daughters finish high school, Dave’s home is in Pittsburgh and for the past 10 years he has had a working farm in his hometown of Bloomsburg, which has been in the family for decades.”
McCormick grew up in that small town on the Susquehanna River, where his father was a local college president. Political ads emphasize a biography of high school sports, hunting and Christmas tree trimming on his family’s farm.
His career since leaving Pennsylvania has been significantly more gilded.
After graduating from West Point, McCormick served as an officer in the Gulf War and later received his doctorate from Princeton. During the heady days of the dot-com bubble, McCormick was CEO of the internet auction house FreeMarkets.
He served several years in the administration of President George W. Bush, including a stint as deputy to then Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson. He then joined the top executive ranks of global hedge fund giant Bridgewater Associates, eventually rising to CEO. In 2022, McCormick and his wife, Dina Powell McCormick, a former Goldman Sachs executive, had net worths ranging between $95.7 million and at least $196.7 million, including homes in Dallas and the Colorado Rockies, according to an analysis by a candidate financial disclosure he filed with the Senate last year.
Once McCormick set his sights on the U.S. Senate, he began making some well-timed adjustments.
Three months before launching his first Senate run in January 2022, McCormick sold his family’s $6.5 million home in Fairfield, Connecticut. That was followed by the purchase of a stately Tudor-style home for $2.8 million in Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill North neighborhood, records show.
Around the same time, the Connecticut mansion that he now lists as his home address in some public records was taken off the rental market.
McCormick also did not receive a Pittsburgh residence tax exemption, a tax break reserved for an individual’s primary residence. He voted for the first time in 16 years in Pennsylvania elections during the 2022 Republican primary when he was on the ballot, voting data shows.
When McCormick made his concession speech after losing to Oz by just over 900 votes, he was unequivocal about where he lived.
‘We’re not going anywhere. This is my house. This is our home,” McCormick said. “This is where my dreams were launched, and this is where we plan to have a future.”
Meanwhile, his children continued to attend a $53,000-a-year private school in Connecticut, where one is still enrolled, according to the school’s website.
In January, as McCormick began to see another run, he lost his $13.4 million apartment on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. A document signed by McCormick filed in connection with the sale was notarized in Westport, Connecticut, and lists the nearby beachfront home as his address.
This spring, McCormick took part in a series of virtual interviews from the kitchen of his Westport home. Distinctive features in the background match photos posted publicly before the McCormicks moved in.
A $5,000 campaign contribution made in late March also lists the beachfront house as McCormick’s home.
McCormick’s wealth, which he can use for his political aspirations, makes him an attractive potential candidate for the Republican establishment in Washington, which encourages him to run again.
But it also presents an opportunity for Democrats, who are likely to seize on his ties to Wall Street in what is expected to be another of the most competitive senate contests in the country.
“This is all dress-up,” said JB Poersch, the chief of the Senate Democrats’ TV spending campaign division. “
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Associated Press writer Marc Levy contributed from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
