Editorial: Pennsylvania will flood with campaign cash in 2024

We knew it was coming.

The 2024 election year was bound to be some rough weather for Pennsylvania. It’s a presidential year, after all, which means national campaign funds and political action committee money will fall like rain.

Presidential years also mean state and federal representatives will be on the ballot. Let’s not forget state senate seats. Some of those will be shuffled or face new contenders after the 2020 census results and the periodic redrawing of legislative maps.

But Pennsylvania has another cloud on the horizon — the U.S. Senate race.

Just two years after a free-for-all that pitted unconventional political star John Fetterman against surgeon-turned-talk show host Mehmet Oz, the state will now be at the mercy of the fight for its second U.S. Senate seat.

Incumbent and Pennsylvania legacy politician Bob Casey Jr., D-Scranton, is seeking reelection. He has a challenger in Pittsburgh engineer Blaine Forkner for the Democratic nomination.

On the Republican side, former hedge fund CEO Dave McCormick is making a second run at the Senate after a strong showing against Oz in 2022 came down to a photo finish, court challenges and ultimately a McCormick concession. Two other Republicans announced, but neither Tariq Parvez or Cory Widmann are the kind of prominent GOP names who were drawn to the last race. There is still time, though — the filing deadline isn’t until Feb. 13.

So far, Casey and McCormick are the ones accumulating cash — and that’s what we foresaw in November when U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., announced he would not seek reelection.

“Literally, as goes Manchin, so goes the Senate. But without Manchin, the math becomes uncertain, and that makes the future of the Pennsylvania seat all the more important,” we said at the time, predicting a tsunami of campaign money and, therefore, campaign ads in 2024.

That’s being proven as McCormick reports $5.4 million in donations in the last quarter of 2023, plus $1 million of his own cash, for a $6.4 million total. That’s the highest of any Senate candidate so far.

Casey’s campaign apparatus has been in place far longer and is steadily chugging along with $3.6 million in the last quarter of 2023. That seems a lot smaller but is added to $3.2 million in the third quarter and $4 million in the second.

And none of that includes the real blizzard of cash that can blanket the airwaves and mailboxes with ads — the third-party PACs.

Brace yourself. It’s going to be a long year.