How McCormick won Pennsylvania’s Senate race
By
Salena Zito
November 22, 2024 1:36 pm
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It is just after 9:00 p.m. on election night in an oversized suite on the 24th floor of downtown Pittsburgh‘s Fairmont Hotel. All of the couches and cushioned chairs have been placed along the wall and replaced by around a half dozen campaign staffers working at desks, or makeshift desks, watching data start to pour in from across Pennsylvania. In the center of it all sits Dave McCormick, looking at a monitor with his wife, Dina Powell, hovering over him, her arm on his shoulder.
It is a tender moment captured in the middle of a chaotic scene.
It’s early, and McCormick, Republican Senate challenger, is behind incumbent Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) at this moment, but there appears little panic. In fact, they are smiling. So are Mark Harris and Brad Todd, McCormick’s top campaign advisers. Harris is looking at a whiteboard with counties scribbled across the top, and Todd is pacing, looking at his iPhone. Elizabeth Gregory, McCormick’s press secretary, is on the phone. Matt Gruda, McCormick’s campaign manager, is watching the results as the Republican challenger starts to grab a very slim lead.
By midnight, they all know McCormick will win, as they have suspected for the past month. However, it would take the Associated Press two days to call it and Casey two weeks to concede a race very few analysts thought the three-term Democrat could ever lose to a candidate his team believed was an easy target.
McCormick and his team believed otherwise.
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https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/3239190/how-mccormick-won-pennsylvania-senate-race/
