Global Courant 2023-04-11 15:00:50
FIRST ON FOX: The Senate Republican campaign committee didn’t wait long to target Democratic Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania.
A day after Casey announced his 2024 reelection campaign as he seeks a fourth six-year term as the key state representative on the Capitol Hill general election battlefield, the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) launched a digital attack ad in a crucial Senate race that could determine whether the GOP wins back the majority of the chamber next year.
Casey, a moderate who won his reelection in 2018 by a comfortable 13 points during a blue wave cycle, gave Democrats a big boost Monday with his re-election announcement as his party fights for their razor-thin 51-49 majority next year if they win 23 of defend the 34 seats up for grabs.
The senator, the son of a two-term former governor, is well known in Pennsylvania. But Republicans view Casey, who turns 63 this week and is recovering from surgery to treat prostate cancer, as vulnerable. The NRSC came out with a digital ad, first shared with Fox News on Tuesday, that branded the senator “shady” and highlighted what he says are his connections to “scandal after scandal.”
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“Bob Casey keeps getting caught in the act,” the narrator accuses on the spot. “Caught handing half a million dollars in campaign money to his sister’s company. Caught peddling influence with his brother and caught violating Congressional Insider Trading Act.”
The half million dollars refers to one New York Post article of Monday highlighting more than $500,000, Casey spent his nearly three-decade campaigning career on services provided by his older sister’s Universal Printing Company.
The ad also references the senator’s brother, Patrick Casey, who signed up last year to lobby the Senate on numerous issues. The Senator’s office told Politico earlier this year that their office abides by ethical rules that prohibit a legislator or their staff from having any lobbying contact with that legislator’s spouse or immediate family member who is a lobbyist. The spot also references a report of Casey’s disclosure of a stock sale after a 45-day reporting period mandated by the Senate Ethics Office had passed.
The narrator in the ad also accuses Casey of “investing Pennsylvania pensions in a company backed by Communist China, which the Department of Defense called ‘a threat to national security’.”
Senator Bob Casey, D-Pa., speaks for President Joe Biden about his infrastructure agenda as he announces funding to upgrade Philadelphia’s water facilities and replace lead pipes, Friday, Feb. 3, 2023, at the Belmont Water Treatment Center in Philadelphia. Casey said he will seek a fourth term in office, bringing unparalleled name recognition to Pennsylvania politics in his party’s defense for a seat in a presidential battleground state. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File)
The narrator refers to an investment Casey guided during his 2005 to 2007 tenure as Pennsylvania treasurer of more than $31 million of state pensions into a Chinese government-backed company. a New York Post article late last month highlighted that “a 2007 state report on the fund holds notes by the Pennsylvania State Employees’ Retirement System in China Mobile Ltd. worth $31,386,930 – the eighth largest state-owned foreign asset at the time. that included big brands like Nestle, UBS and BP.”
In 2020, the Ministry of Defense identified China Mobile as a threat to national security, and the New York Stock Exchange delisted the company a year later.
“This story is a false attack — the investment in question was made before Bob Casey became state treasurer in 2005,” a spokesperson for Casey told the New York Post.
“No one is tougher on China than Senator Casey. During his time in the Senate, he has fought to crack down on China’s currency manipulation, unfair trade practices and U.S. companies investing in China at the expense of U.S. workers,” a spokesperson added. .
In last November’s midterm elections, Democrats flipped Pennsylvania’s other Senate seat — which was held by outgoing GOP Senator Patrick Toomey — as now-senator. John Fetterman defeated Republican Mehmet Oz, the heart surgeon and famous physician.
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Republicans are once again pushing to flip a Senate seat in the Keystone state and the digital ad — which is backed by a modest five-figure purchase — is likely just a small taste of more as the 2024 cycle heats up.
“Know this: (Senate Republican Leader) Mitch McConnell and the GOP are already running for this seat. I won’t be able to win this re-election battle alone,” Casey warned in a fundraising email Monday.
The senator, who had about $3 million in cash in his campaign coffers at the start of the year, will likely campaign for re-election by highlighting his efforts to bring infrastructure spending and manufacturing jobs to Pennsylvania. He is not expected to make a serious primary challenge for the Democratic Senate nomination.
The NRSC is looking for Dave McCormick for Casey. McCormick, a former hedge fund executive, West Point graduate, Gulf War veteran, and Treasury Department official in the administration of former President George W. Bush, narrowly lost to Oz last year in the GOP Senate primary by less than 1,000 votes.
McCormick, who is currently on tour for his new book “Superpower in Peril: A Battle Plan to Renew America,” told Fox News last month that “as for the Senate, we’re going to go through this book tour and it’s a not a decision we have to make now. We will think about it and pray about it as a family.”
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McCormick isn’t the only Republican considering running for the Senate in Pennsylvania next year.
Former Senator Doug Mastriano, a far-right Trump loyalist who lost last year’s gubernatorial election by double digits, is also considering a bid, and has already fired at McCormick.
“For months, Pennsylvania Republicans have lashed McCormick for his track record of outsourcing jobs and for his close ties to China, Wall Street, and Mitch McConnell. With Mastriano making noises about entering the race, the primary dynamic is turning of Republicans in the Senate getting messier by the day,” David Berstein, spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, told Fox News.