HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) – Republican David McCormick has won Pennsylvania’s crucial U.S. Senate seat after the former CEO of the world’s largest hedge fund defeated the three-term Democratic senator. Bob Casey in Tuesday’s elections, after accusing the incumbent party of supporting policies that led to inflation, civil unrest and war.

The battleground state battle consolidates Republicans’ majority in the Senate, which they wrested from Democratic control this week.

McCormick, 59, won back a Republican seat in Pennsylvania that Republicans lost in 2022, paying off a bet that lot of brass made as they urged McCormick to run and consolidate support behind him.

McCormick drew on contacts from across the government, political and financial worlds to secure support for his campaign after being CEO of the world’s largest hedge fund and serving at the highest levels of former President George W. Bush’s administration.

Defeating Casey is earth-shattering for the Democratic establishment in Pennsylvania. Casey is the namesake of a former two-term governor and Pennsylvania’s longest-serving Democrat ever in the Senate. Until Tuesday, Casey had won six statewide general elections dating back to 1996.

McCormick drummed out the consistent message that Casey was a do-nothing and weak career politician who was a key ally of the president. Joe Biden and vice president Kamala Harris. McCormick claimed he would bring leadership to his position.

McCormick also benefited from tens of millions of dollars in campaign money from billionaires and other allies from around the hedge fund and securities trading worlds.

It was from McCormick second time running, this time with a clear primary and the support of former President Donald Trump, behind him narrowly lost to the Trump-backed Dr. Mehmet Oz in the expensive seven-way 2022 primaries.

He has a lengthy resume, including honors for serving in the Gulf War, earning a doctorate from Princeton University, running online auction house FreeMarkets Inc. – which had its name on a Pittsburgh skyscraper during the tech boom – and sits on the boards of prominent institutions, including Trump’s Defense Advisory Board.

He also had baggage.

He repeatedly tried to soften his stance against abortion rights after celebrating the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overturn the landmark 1972 Roe v. Wade decision and end half a century of federal protection of the right to abortion. Ultimately, McCormick insisted that he would oppose a federal ban on abortion and leave in place Pennsylvania’s law, which allows abortion up to the 24th week of pregnancy.

McCormick faced accusations — first in the 2022 Republican primaries and then again from Casey — that he was a wealthy carpet hunter from the posh state of Connecticut. Gold Coast trying to buy a Senate seat. McCormick lived there until he ran for Senate in 2022 and while he bought a house in Pittsburgh, he also had a huge house in Connecticut until a stepdaughter graduated high school earlier this year.

McCormick, in turn, emphasized his seventh generation roots in Pennsylvania, talked about his high school days, wrestling in northern Pennsylvania towns — a sport that took him to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point — and growing up as the son of two teachers. His father became the first chancellor of the Pennsylvania state university system – under Casey’s father.

Still, McCormick helped bring the carpetbagger caricature to life by mispronouncing the name of one of Pennsylvania’s most famous local beers.

McCormick also suffered a legion of attacks on his hedge fund’s investments, including allegations that he got rich at America’s expense by buying shares in Chinese companies that the federal government later came to view as part of Beijing’s military and surveillance-industrial complex.

McCormick, meanwhile, sought to take advantage of unrest in the Middle East and at the U.S. southern border with Mexico.

He made a bid for Jewish voters by traveling to the Israel-Gaza border, speaking to Jewish audiences across the state and arguing that Casey and the Biden administration did not fight anti-Semitism whether Israel supported strongly enough in the Israel-Hamas war.

At the border, he backed Trump’s pledge to carry out an unauthorized mass deportation of immigrants in the country – with priority given to those with criminal records – and vowed to press the US. military action in Mexico to target fentanyl trafficking networks, a controversial idea that originated with Trump.

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Follow Marc Levy https://x.com/timelywriter.