Republican operatives hope Bridgewater boss can win tight Senate race

When longtime private equity executive Glenn Youngkin swept to victory in the Virginia governor’s race last month, Republicans thought they had alighted on a winning formula for the post-Trump era.

Now, party operatives in Pennsylvania are betting that another conservative financier, Bridgewater chief executive David McCormick, will be able to walk a similar political tightrope to win the state’s US Senate race next year.

To do so, backers say, McCormick must lean on his impressive CV and a considerable cash pile to secure support not just from Donald Trump’s base, but also among the independents and moderate voters who abandoned the Republicans in droves during the last president’s administration.

To his supporters, McCormick, 56, is an even more attractive version of Youngkin, the former CEO of Carlyle. In addition to having held a senior private sector job, the Bridgewater boss is also an Army veteran with a Bronze Star who has government experience and a PhD from Princeton.

McCormick has yet to formally enter a crowded field of Republican Senate hopefuls that already includes Trump’s ambassador to Denmark, reality TV star Dr Oz and a local real estate developer.

But people close to the hedge fund boss say he has informed colleagues of his plans, and will step aside from managing the mammoth $150bn fund in the coming weeks to embark on a political campaign.

“We have an opportunity here for somebody who is frankly quite exceptional, and exceptional might be what we need to win,” said Daniel Meuser, a Republican congressman from Pennsylvania who is already backing McCormick’s expected candidacy.

McCormick, who is based in Connecticut but grew up in central Pennsylvania, has been meeting party leadership, donors and activists in the Keystone state in recent days to drum up interest.

The Pennsylvania Senate race will be among the tightest and most closely watched contests in next year’s midterms, when Republicans will seek to regain control of both chambers of Congress.

McCormick allies say they see similarities between their candidate and Youngkin, a political novice who built a broad coalition of supporters in Virginia, which Biden and the Democrats won by more than 10 points in 2020. Biden beat Trump by a razor-thin margin of just over 80,000 in Pennsylvania last year.

However, people close to McCormick also argue the political newcomer would enter the Pennsylvania race with a stronger CV than Youngkin. A graduate of the prestigious West Point military academy, he served in the first Gulf war and eventually earned a prominent Treasury role under George W Bush.

Later he joined Bridgewater, the idiosyncratic hedge fund founded by Ray Dalio, becoming co-CEO in 2016 and sole chief executive last year.

“It is a point in time in America where the Glenn Youngkins and Dave McCormicks of the world are badly needed in the Republican party to restore some stability,” said one person encouraging McCormick to run.

“You can still be a conservative, you can be principled, without being brash or offensive,” the person added. “There is a way to do it, to still get those Trump voters without being Trump.”

McCormick’s advisers say he will need to thread a similar needle to Youngkin, who gained traction among rural voters after an endorsement from Trump but then kept the former president at arm’s length on the campaign trail to appeal to moderates in the suburbs.

“It is a double-edged sword,” said Charlie Dent, a former Republican congressman from the Lehigh valley who has yet to back a candidate in the Senate race. “The Trump endorsement could be of use in a primary, but it could also be the kiss of death in a general.”

Trump could throw his weight behind another Pennsylvania hopeful after the candidate he initially endorsed, Army veteran Sean Parnell, suspended his campaign last month amid accusations of domestic abuse from his estranged wife.

McCormick has clear ties to the Trump White House: his wife, Dina Powell McCormick, who is a partner at Goldman Sachs, spent a year as Trump’s deputy national security adviser.

Several former Trump advisers have encouraged McCormick to run, and the former president last week hinted he might back the hedge fund boss, telling conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt that “a couple of people” he described as “excellent” were joining the Pennsylvania race.

But McCormick also appears to be winning over some Trump critics. William Sasso, a longtime Republican political donor from Philadelphia who said he was “totally disenchanted” with the former president, said he saw parallels between McCormick and the state’s outgoing GOP senator Pat Toomey, who has fallen out of favour with Trump’s base.

“[Toomey] was not an ideologue like so many others on both sides of the aisle. If he felt something was not appropriate for the country, he made it known, regardless of who was promoting it, Democrat or Republican,” Sasso said. “I have been impressed by Dave McCormick in that I believe he is cut from the same cloth.”

“I think most people realise that [McCormick] is not a Trumper,” Sasso added.

For now, people close to McCormick are keen to push back against suggestions he is an out-of-touch “carpetbagger” — allegations that have already plagued Oz — and instead emphasise the executive’s modest upbringing and ties to the local community.

“There are certain people who have their home state in their blood and he is one of them,” said Mike DeVanney, a Pittsburgh-based political strategist advising McCormick.

However, others acknowledge that McCormick’s hedge fund credentials may be a vulnerability on the campaign trail, with opponents likely to pore over Bridgewater’s investments — especially in China — or be turned off by the candidate’s personal wealth.

Dalio made headlines this month when he appeared to liken China’s human rights abuses to that of a “strict parent”. He later apologised for a lack of nuance, and McCormick separately sought to distance himself from the comments.

McCormick allies nevertheless insist his successes in the business world will be an asset in selling himself to voters.

“He was somebody who was self-made,” DeVanney added. “I think he is somebody that is not afraid to lean into that success.”

McCormick’s current and former colleagues describe him as charming, confident and someone who holds himself and those around him to the highest standards. But some expressed scepticism over whether he would have an easy transition from the board room to the campaign trail.

“If you said he is going to be the next Republican secretary of the Treasury . . . that would not surprise me,” said one person who worked with McCormick in the Bush administration.

“But being somebody on the campaign trail, having to have the patience to glad hand people and yuk it up?” they added. “That is not the Dave McCormick I know.”