GOP Senate contenders aren't shy about wanting Trump's approval. But in Pennsylvania, it's awkward

McCormick declined an interview request, and Trump’s campaign aides didn’t respond to messages. But the pall between them is hard to miss.

The men haven’t spoken to each other since 2022, according to McCormick’s campaign. They didn’t meet when Trump was in the state recently to speak to National Rifle Association members at the NRA’s Great American Outdoor Show. McCormick didn’t attend and Trump never mentioned McCormick during the 82-minute speech.

In a recent interview with conservative broadcasters, McCormick acknowledged the likelihood that the men will lead the GOP ticket in Pennsylvania and described the relationship in transactional terms.

“My guess is that President Trump at the top of the ticket will help me, and I’d be hopeful that my candidacy and the strength I would bring will help him,” McCormick said on “The Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show.”

McCormick tiptoed around Trump’s liabilities with moderate voters in a state Trump lost by 1 point in 2020. Instead, McCormick suggested Trump can help him because he mobilizes a huge part of the Republican Party to vote — and that McCormick can help Trump with more moderate voters.

McCormick has said he hadn’t believed he needed Trump’s endorsement to win in 2022, as long as Trump wasn’t attacking him, and acknowledged the necessity of convincing moderate voters to back him. On Thursday, he name-dropped Trump when he told the crowd at a family farm in northern Pennsylvania that he is wealthy and, thus, can be an independent politician without fear of losing the job.

“I don’t need to make a living after this,” McCormick said. “I don’t owe anybody anything. I don’t owe President Trump anything. I don’t owe (Senate GOP Leader) Mitch McConnell anything. The only people I would owe anything to are the people of Pennsylvania who put me in office.”

Still, Borick and other pollsters aren’t sure if there’s a needle left for McCormick to thread, given Trump’s unpopularity with moderates and the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, ending a half-century of federal protection of abortion rights.

McCormick is an abortion opponent — he has said most recently that he supports letting states ban abortion, with exceptions for rape, incest and to save the life of the mother — a position that could limit his appeal to otherwise persuadable moderates.

On top of that, McCormick is virtually unknown compared to Casey, pollsters say.

“Right now, the biggest vulnerability for McCormick is nobody really knows him in this state, and he’s got to make sure he defines himself before Casey does,” said Berwood Yost, a pollster and director of the Center for Opinion Research at Franklin and Marshall College.

Yost and other analysts say it will be difficult for McCormick to win without the enthusiastic support of Trump’s base. But, Yost said, McCormick may have to figure out how to do that in a challenging political environment if he is “someone who Trump doesn’t favor.”

For his part, McCormick has promised to back the GOP’s presidential nominee — likely to be Trump. And McCormick has largely stuck with Trump on policy, including siding against Democrats and McConnell in the divisive fight in Congress over bipartisan legislation to tighten border security and send more aid to Ukraine to help it fight Russia’s invasion.

This time around, McCormick didn’t need Trump’s help to get the party’s endorsement or effectively clear the primary field. And McCormick — who has deep pockets and high-level connections in business and politics — has wealthy backers in what is expected to be one of the nation’s most expensive Senate races.

A supportive super PAC reported nearly $18 million in contributions, largely from big Republican donors across the world of high finance and securities trading, and McCormick has promises of support from party brass, including a super PAC linked to McConnell.

Still, there will come a general election cycle when Trump will visit Pennsylvania again. When that happens, both men will have a decision to make about whether to appear together. That could be especially uncomfortable for McCormick, Democrats say.

“McCormick will be given a pretty bad choice: to skip it and risk potentially being a target of Trump’s,” Mikus said, “or going and paying the price politically for cozying up to Trump.”