HARRISBURG, PA — A Republican defending Medicare, social security and abortion. A Democrat promoting middle-class tax cuts and fracking.
It wasn’t the presidential debate — or the vice presidential debate, for that matter — but Democratic Sen. Bob Casey and his Republican challenger in Pennsylvania, Dave McCormick, made efforts to appear in line with the top of the ticket Thursday night.
Either top of the ticket, actually.
As Casey and McCormick squared off for their first debate, both men seemed determined to tack toward the middle and align themselves with the most moderate positions of the presidential candidates.
It’s a stark contrast to the other races that will determine control of the Senate, where Democrats have largely avoided tying themselves to Joe Biden or Kamala Harris and Republicans have tried to draw contrasts between themselves and Donald Trump. But that calculus seems different in this most crucial swing state.
“I think she’ll carry Pennsylvania,” Casey said of Harris during the debate. “Pennsylvania is going to be very close, just like the Senate race will be close, but she’s running a strong campaign.”
Casey laid out the choices before his home state as “two basic decisions”: Who should represent Pennsylvania in the Senate, and who should be president?
But what distinguishes those two decisions, from the debate stage, appeared to be very little.
When pressed if Biden or Harris would be the better president for Pennsylvania, Casey wouldn’t answer.
“I don’t know, Dennis,” he told moderator Dennis Owens. “We’ll never know the answer to that.”
Casey hails from Scranton, just as Biden, and the two are close friends and allies. McCormick and Trump have a rockier history.
Trump endorsed Mehmet Oz in the 2022 Republican Senate primary over McCormick, leading to Oz narrowly defeating McCormick in the GOP primary by just 900 votes. (Oz went on to lose to Democratic Sen. John Fetterman.)
As McCormick said of Trump in his 2023 memoir, “He called me Wall Street, not Main Street. Soft on China, not tough on China. A globalist, not America First. He labeled me weak, not a fighter, and said I’d get to Washington and ‘fold,’ like all the establishment Republicans.”
McCormick was unopposed in the Republican primary this time around, and Trump has given McCormick his full endorsement. McCormick appears regularly with Trump, including onstage just minutes before the assassination attempt in Butler.
When McCormick was asked on Thursday night about the difference between him and Trump, McCormick pointed to the state and local tax deduction. Trump recently came out in support of reducing the cap, even though, as president, it was Trump who signed the new cap into law. McCormick thinks the cap on the deduction should stay in place.
But as much as both men seemed determined to stay within the mainstream of their parties, they were also interested in tying their opponent to the tops of their ticket.
As McCormick finished an answer about his ties to Trump, his campaign had already sent out an email pointing out that Casey has voted with Biden 98% of the time.
“It’s laughable that he talks about independence,” McCormick said of Casey. “This is a man who’s voted 99% of the time with Biden and Harris. This is a man who was recently asked on CNN, what do you disagree with Vice President Harris? He doesn’t think of a single thing.”
Besides a couple of state-based questions on Three Mile Island and the potential acquisition of U.S. Steel — as well as a couple of jabs from Casey on McCormick’s ties to Connecticut — national issues like the economy, immigration and abortion dominated the debate.
For months, polls have shown Casey with a consistent lead over McCormick, though recent polls from CNN and The Washington Post have shown the race effectively tied.
Just like at the top of the ticket in Pennsylvania, the border and immigration are at the front and center of the race. Pennsylvania polls consistently show Harris trailing Trump on the issue, and like Trump, McCormick has made it central to the campaign.
Interestingly, Casey never uttered Trump’s name in the hour-long debate, though he made the connection from the former president to McCormick clear.
“Leadership would be taking on the leader of your own party and anyone else, and supporting the bill,” Casey said of a border security bill that both parties negotiated before Trump scuttled the legislation with his own party.
“He doesn’t want to do it because he doesn’t want to take on the leader of his party,” Casey said.
—
Katherine Swartz is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.