“What you’ve seen from that campaign is what I would expect for somebody running for borough council president”
PENNSYLVANIA – New reporting from the Washington Examiner exposes claims that Connecticut hedge fund executive David McCormick’s campaign has resorted to dirty political tricks in the aftermath of losing out on the Trump endorsement to New Jersey daytime TV host Mehmet Oz.
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Washington Examiner
McCormick campaign playing dirty in GOP Pennsylvania Senate fight, rivals say
By Juliegrace Brufke
The campaign of Pennsylvania Republican Senate candidate David McCormick is trying to make sure pledges of support it received hold in the primary’s final month.
The McCormick campaign and its allies are placing heavy pressure on key political figures in an effort to shore up endorsements and donors. The organization’s tactics could prove crucial ahead of the May 17 primary in which McCormick, a former hedge fund executive, faces Dr. Mehmet Oz, a longtime TV personality who has the endorsement of former President Donald Trump.
Rep. Guy Reschenthaler of Pennsylvania, a member of House GOP leadership and an early endorser of Oz, told the Washington Examiner that McCormick’s camp has threatened a primary against him and taken aim at his donors.
“What you’ve seen from that campaign is what I would expect for somebody running for borough council president where they think that threats to other candidates, other candidates supporters — they think that that’s going to somehow make a difference,” Reschenthaler said in an interview. “This is a statewide race and the fifth-largest state of the union. And those kinds of tactics are not effective nor are they appreciated by anybody,”
Reschenthaler said Trump confidante, lobbyist, and Republican strategist David Urban had engaged in hardball tactics on the McCormick campaign’s behalf at the recent House GOP retreat sponsored by the party’s campaign arm, the National Republican Congressional Committee.
“I’ve got witnesses of Dave Urban at the NRCC retreat threatening the primary if I don’t stop supporting Oz and back McCormick,” Reschenthaler said.
Urban, who helped McCormick launch his bid, denied “speaking on behalf of the campaign.”
“As a fellow West Point graduate and combat veteran, like my friend Dave McCormick, I, along with many other fellow veterans, was disgusted that Guy would question his patriotism and dedication to our country,” Urban said in a statement. “There are some lines you just don’t cross, and this is one. I was not speaking on behalf of any campaign. I was speaking as a proud patriot.”
Tensions between McCormick’s wife, Dina Powell McCormick, and other Pennsylvania Senate candidates have boiled over into public eye. Three witnesses confirmed to the Washington Examiner that she got into a confrontation with another Pennsylvania GOP Senate candidate, Jeff Bartos, in front of a group of around 20 people in January.
Both were walking in the same direction when she got in his face and started screaming at him. Dina Powell McCormick, who worked in the George W. Bush and Trump administrations and is now a Goldman Sachs executive, “was saying that he was a disgrace and he was dirty politics, and they thought that he was a better man than that,” one source recalled. “And how dare he and he would regret it — really getting very aggressive with him.”
The source added, “I was right there for the whole thing when this all started. I turned around because I heard her raise her voice the first time, and she ran right over to him and got in his face.”
David McCormick’s campaign denied that it was an aggressive interaction.
Two sources said similar instances happened, also in late January, with Dina Powell McCormick confronting Oz at a caucus meeting in northeast Pennsylvania. She went after Oz over his ads taking aim at David McCormick regarding his business dealings with China.
“Dina was at the entrance, kind of in front of the door, and kind of stopped him and confronted him about a few things. The conversation went on for about 45 seconds to a minute,” another source said. “She was attacking Dr. Oz because she was mad that he ran an ad about McCormick’s ties to China.”
Another attendee of the event confirmed the account, telling the Washington Examiner that “Dina tersely confronted Dr. Oz by blocking a doorway as Dr. Oz was trying to leave an event while Dave McCormick sat and watched from his car.”
A GOP operative who supports another Pennsylvania Republican candidate, Carla Sands, Trump’s ambassador to Denmark, told the Washington Examiner they witnessed Dina Powell McCormick pull potential donors away at an event in December.
“Carla would be standing there, and Dina just would be going up to people and trying to pull them away and say, ‘You don’t want to talk to her. Let me talk to you about something,’” the source said.
The operative added that during the Pennsylvania GOP endorsement process, Dina Powell McCormick and members of her husband’s camp heavily pressured county-level elected officials and state lawmakers for support.
“Normally during that process, you’ll have some elected officials that’ll call and say, ‘Hey, I’d really like to do X, Y, and Z.’ But what we actually saw was more to the point of threatening where it was … a conversation of, like, ‘Hey, well, we’re going to be getting your boss on board, and I really don’t want to have to go to your boss and say you’re not going to be supporting, like, you know, Dave,’” the source continued.
The state GOP ultimately did not endorse the race.
The McCormick campaign denied that Dina Powell McCormick confronted Oz, interfered with Sands’s campaigning, or that its surrogates or campaign officials made any threats to politicians.
The race intensified Saturday when Trump opted to endorse Oz over David McCormick.
The McCormick camp has largely dismissed Trump’s endorsement in the race, arguing it’s not necessary to win the primary.
McCormick’s endorsements include Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, former White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, and Reps. Dan Meuser and Glenn Thompson.
While sources have accused the McCormick campaign of aggressive behavior, McCormick supporters argue that Oz has largely run negative campaign ads since the race began heating up in January.
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