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GOP turns the spotlight on Sen. Bob Casey's family ties in key Pennsylvania race

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GOP turns the spotlight on Sen. Bob Casey's family ties in key Pennsylvania race


Bob Casey Jr. rode a wave of reform to the U.S. Senate in 2006, standing out with other Democrats who vowed to end a culture of scandal and self-dealing in Washington, D.C.

A fixture of Pennsylvania politics whose late father had served as governor, Casey unveiled an ethics plan at the restaurant formerly owned by disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff. He later seethed over an ad in which his Republican opponent questioned his integrity.

Nearly two decades later, Casey faces a tough fight for a fourth term, along with accusations that friends and family have benefited from his political career. In a family with a brand name in Pennsylvania politics, several Casey siblings have seen their own politics-adjacent careers intersect with the senator’s.

There’s a brother who registered to lobby for a semiconductor manufacturer soon after Casey supported a bill to expand opportunities for the industry. There’s another brother whose law partner helps Casey recommend federal judges and whose firm’s employees have donated more than $225,000 to Casey’s campaigns, according to Federal Election Commission documents. And there’s a sister whose printing company has received more than a half-million dollars’ worth of work from Casey’s campaigns, records show.

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Casey, 64, is not accused of breaking any laws or violating ethics rules. But GOP operatives working to unseat him in one of the country’s top Senate races this year are calling attention to those and other family ties. The National Republican Senatorial Committee has also compared Casey to President Joe Biden, whose family members have been accused of trading on their famous last name.

“It’s called the Casey Cartel,” the narrator says in an ad from the NRSC. “Because, like Biden, Bob Casey gets elected, and his family gets richer.”

The senator’s defenders point to a long commitment to ethics reform, including his crusade against influence peddling and revolving-door practices involving members of Congress, their staffers and Washington’s K Street lobbying firms. Elements of the plan Casey pushed as a candidate in 2006 made it into a bill signed into law by then-President George W. Bush.

Casey also voiced support eight years ago for former President Donald Trump’s “drain the swamp” push for a five-year lobbying ban on former executive branch officials. 

In a written statement for this article, Casey campaign manager Tiernan Donohue characterized the GOP messaging as “baseless attacks” and a “blatant attempt to distract” from potential liabilities for his Republican opponent, Dave McCormick. Donohue noted past media scrutiny over McCormick’s campaign finance practices, as well as Bridgewater Associates’ investments in Chinese companies during McCormick’s time running the hedge fund. McCormick has acknowledged his work at the hedge fund while campaigning on proposals for tougher restrictions on U.S. investments in China. 

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“Senator Bob Casey is known across the Commonwealth for his commitment to high ethical standards and quality public service,” Donohue said in the statement.

The case the GOP is prosecuting against Casey mirrors a playbook that the party is using against other vulnerable Democrats this year with partisan control of the Senate up for grabs. 

Sen. Jon Tester of Montana, facing a challenge from former aerospace executive Tim Sheehy, has come under scrutiny for his relationships with lobbyists. Sen. Sherrod Brown, who is running against businessman Bernie Moreno in Ohio, faced questions in a HuffPost story this year about how his pro-labor record squares with support for a merger involving the Kroger grocery chain. Democrats, meanwhile, have branded McCormick and other GOP Senate candidates as wealthy elitists with unscrupulous business practices, from Sheehy’s work in aerial firefighting to Moreno’s days as a car salesman.

“Bob Casey and his family have displayed a pattern of corruption that should infuriate Pennsylvanians,” NRSC spokesperson Philip Letsou said. “Pennsylvanians are struggling to get by but career politician Bob Casey’s top priority seems to be enriching his family.” 

Defeating Casey this fall won’t be easy. He won each of his three Senate terms by comfortable margins and is respected across the aisle. McCormick, meanwhile, has been criticized for the time he spends at a rental home in Connecticut.

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“I’m true to my core, a Keystone State guy. I’ve known the Casey family, and the pride in the Casey family in this state is huge,” Scott Hoeflich, who served as chief of staff to the late Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter, the former Republican who became a Democrat while serving with Casey, said in an interview. “Bob Casey Jr. is a great guy. … He’s always been an upstanding public servant with the highest integrity standards.”

Several of the Casey family ties that Republicans are scrutinizing have been covered by other news organizations in recent years. And some of the connections appear more coincidental or more at arm’s-length than others. None of the family members mentioned in this article responded to requests for comment.

Casey’s brother-in-law, Patrick Brier, registered in 2022 as a state lobbyist for Keystone First, a company that was being audited in a federal investigation of Medicaid managed care providers that Casey had called for in his role as the ranking Democrat on the Senate Committee on Aging. The connection was first reported by Broad + Liberty, a right-leaning Pennsylvania outlet. There is no record that Brier ever lobbied for the company at the federal level. The audit report, released six months after Brier began lobbying for the company, was critical of Keystone First, finding that the company “did not comply with Federal and State requirements” when denying dozens of requests for care or service. 

One of Casey’s brothers, Patrick Casey, registered to lobby the Senate on behalf of a semiconductor company in late 2022 — a move first reported by Politico. His disclosure statement noted that his work focused on U.S. semiconductor policy and implementation of the CHIPS and Science Act, which had passed earlier that year. In January, Patrick Casey’s firm reported that he was no longer lobbying for the client.

“Pat Casey is not lobbying Senator Casey’s office,” Casey spokesperson Mairead Lynn said in an emailed statement. “Senator Casey supported and voted for the 2007 law prohibiting family members from lobbying Senate offices, and he abides by that law.”

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Away from the lobbying scene, Casey’s state and federal campaigns have spent nearly $600,000 with Universal Printing Co., the Scranton-area print shop run by the senator’s sister, Margi McGrath, who identifies herself as the company’s CEO and business owner, according to FEC records. McGrath and her husband, William, a Universal executive, have donated more than $50,000 to Casey’s campaigns and affiliated PACs over the years, records show. The New York Post first reported on Casey’s use of his sister as a campaign vendor last year.

Casey, who before being elected to the Senate served as a state auditor general and treasurer and lost a 2002 primary for governor, paid Universal more than $255,000 for work on those campaigns, according to state documents. The $325,000 his Senate fund has paid his sister’s firm accounts for a third of his campaign printing expenditures and roughly 15% of Universal’s $2.1 million in federal campaign work since 2005, records show. Universal’s political client list has included the Democratic National Committee and several presidential campaigns.

Hiring a relative for campaign services is legal, so long as the campaign pays fair market value for the services, said Kedric Payne, the vice president, general counsel and senior director for ethics at the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan voter advocacy group.

“In this situation where you have someone who not only has other clients who they provide these services for, but they seem to be providing legitimate services to that member, it would be difficult to argue that there is a violation,” said Payne, who saw no legal jeopardy in the other issues that Republicans have raised against Casey.

Casey has also forged close political ties with Ross Feller Casey, a personal injury law firm co-founded by his brother, Matt Casey. The firm’s employees have donated more than $225,000 to Casey’s campaigns since 2005, according to campaign finance disclosures first reported by the New York Post. The firm also contributed $100,000 in 2017 to PA Values, a super PAC that at the time was backing Casey’s re-election campaign. The firm has not donated since then to the super PAC, which remains active, having recently produced an ad that uses former President Donald Trump’s words in a misleading way to discourage voting by mail.

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Sen. Casey has called on one of Ross Feller Casey’s other founding partners, Robert Ross, frequently over the years to lead committees that screen candidates for federal judicial nominations, according to news releases from his office. Senators from the sitting president’s party typically have the most influence when recommending nominees. During the Obama administration, Casey continued a tradition, established under his Republican predecessors, of running a bipartisan vetting process that gave his GOP counterparts the ability to pick screening committee members.

Ross did not respond to questions for this article.

Defenders of the process, including Republicans, assert that it has yielded quality judges. Former Sen. Pat Toomey, a Republican who succeeded Specter, has spoken highly of the work he and Casey did together.

“The bipartisan, nonpartisan nominating committee has been and is the gold standard for how senators should vet and nominate candidates to the U.S. courts,” Hoeflich, the former Specter aide, said when asked about GOP attacks on the process. “This is politics at its worst — trying to manipulate the information to create false narratives and distract people from the real issues.”

Others offered differing views. One source familiar with Toomey’s role in the process recalled it as being more tilted in Casey’s favor during the Obama years and argued that Toomey’s picks for the screening panels had more serious legal chops, while a former Toomey staffer had a more favorable recollection of Casey’s work. Both requested anonymity to share their insights.

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“We were proud of the process,” the second source said. “I think that bears out when you look at all the judgeships we were able to fill in a pretty timely manner, and they were all high caliber.”

A former senior staffer to former Sen. Rick Santorum, the Republican whom Casey unseated in 2006, said GOP operatives are making “much ado about nothing” with their attacks.

“I’ve never, ever questioned Bob Casey’s ethics, even when he was our opponent in that ’06 election,” said the staffer, who requested anonymity to share candid opinions about GOP messaging. “I never found the Caseys to be anything other than stand-up people.”



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Pennsylvania

Pa. man found guilty of raping teen girl who he took to Mexico

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Pa. man found guilty of raping teen girl who he took to Mexico


A Pennsylvania man was found guilty of repeatedly raping his daughter’s best friend over a three-year span before fleeing with the teen to Mexico.

On Thursday, March 5, 2026, Kevin Esterly, 53, of Whitehall Township, Pennsylvania, was convicted on all counts of rape, statutory sexual assault, involuntary sexual intercourse and endangering the welfare of children.

Esterly shook his head as the verdict was read but said nothing in the courtroom.

Resources for victims of sexual assault are available through the National Sexual Violence Resources Center and the National Sexual Assault Telephone Hotline at 800-656-4673.

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Esterly’s trial began on Tuesday, March 3, after a judge denied his pretrial motion for the charges against him to be dismissed and for the Lehigh County District Attorney to be removed as a prosecutor in the case.

Both Esterly and his victim testified on Wednesday, March 4.

The victim — who is now 24-years-old — told the courtroom that she met Esterly and his family while attending church as a child and became best friends with one of his daughters. Esterly was a youth leader and elder at the church at the time. The victim said Esterly also coached her soccer team.

The victim said she became so close to Esterly’s family that she called his wife “mom” and eventually spent almost every weekend at their home in Lowhill Township, Pennsylvania. She also said she vacationed with them in New York state and Ocean City, Maryland.

The victim said Esterly first sexually assaulted her in August 2015 when she was 13-years-old after he gave her alcohol during a family birthday party.

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“I was scared. Frozen in fear,” the woman told the courtroom on Wednesday. “I pretended I was sleeping.”

The woman accused Esterly of sexually assaulting her almost every time she slept over at his home. She told the courtroom she eventually became addicted to alcohol and drugs, which Esterly gave her in exchange for sex. According to the woman, Esterly gave her cocaine and methamphetamine to keep her awake during school because she “would be up with him all night.”

The woman said Esterly continued to sexually assault her until he was confronted by his wife in 2017. Esterly’s wife then threw him out of the house, according to the victim. She said Esterly continued to sexually assault her over the next year.

Esterly was later arrested and then sentenced to prison after federal agents found him with the victim in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, in 2018. She was 16-years-old at the time.

The woman said she moved on and went to college after Esterly’s sentencing though she still struggled with drug addiction. She said she sought counseling in February 2025. She told the courtroom she received a message from Esterly on LinkedIn that same month in which he apologized for “failing you as a person I was supposed to be for you.” At that point Esterly had been released from prison.

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The woman said she had not told anyone about her relationship with Esterly up to that point and replied to him, “I live with our secret every day as I promised. I would appreciate an apology.”

The woman told the courtroom that Esterly responded by writing, “I hope one day you can forgive me. Nobody knows I reached out to you. That is the best for both of us.”

On Feb. 21, 2025, Allentown Police received a report of Esterly’s sexual assaults which led to the new charges being filed against him. He was arrested in West Virginia in June 2025 after two police pursuits. He was then extradited to Pennsylvania.

The victim told the courtroom on Wednesday that she kept quiet about Esterly’s abuse for years because she “was afraid to speak,” and felt “dirty and ashamed.”

“I wasn’t ready to tell anyone,” she said. “He was a father figure in my life. I loved him.”

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The woman also said she didn’t want to hurt Esterly’s daughter who was her best friend.

When the District Attorney asked her why she was “here today,” she replied by saying, “I want to tell the truth. I want to be set free.”

The woman ended her testimony by saying, “I don’t want to live with this secret anymore.”

After her testimony, Esterly took the stand for 45 minutes, denied all of the accusations against him and accused the woman of lying.

Closing arguments then took place Thursday morning. It then took an hour for the jury of seven women and five men to reach their verdict.

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3 dead in apparent murder-suicide spanning from Pennsylvania to Illinois, police say

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3 dead in apparent murder-suicide spanning from Pennsylvania to Illinois, police say



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Two women are dead in Pennsylvania and a man is dead in Illinois after an apparent murder-suicide, police said on Wednesday.

According to a report from the Pennsylvania State Police, the investigation began in Hillside, Illinois, when police there were dispatched after a man reported two women dead in Jackson Township, Pennsylvania. Police said that when officers got to Hillside, about 15 miles west of Chicago, they found that the man had died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

After identifying him, troopers said Hillside officers contacted police from Jackson Township to request a welfare check at the man’s home on Dior Drive, about 30 miles north of Pittsburgh. 

Map shows distance from Hillside, Illinois, to Zelienople, Pennsylvania

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KDKA


Police said officers used forced entry to get into the home and found two women dead from apparent gunshot wounds. It’s believed the two women were family members of the man who died by suicide in Illinois, investigators said. 

Pennsylvania State Police said they’ve assumed control of the case and are “actively investigating” what happened surrounding the three deaths.

Police didn’t release any names, saying the process of formal identification and notification of next of kin hasn’t been completed. Sources told KDKA that the victims were a husband, wife and their daughter.

“At this time, investigators believe there is no ongoing threat to the public, and law enforcement is not searching for any additional individuals in connection with this incident,” police wrote in the public information release report. “This remains an active and ongoing investigation.”

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State police didn’t release any other details on Wednesday but said more information will be made public when it’s available.  

“My first reaction was shocked because this is such a close-knit neighborhood, and to think something that horrible could happen here is very tragic because they were such a good family,” neighbor Danielle Sporer said on Wednesday. 



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Top Pennsylvania 2027 quarterback enrolls into Coatesville (Pa.)

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Top Pennsylvania 2027 quarterback enrolls into Coatesville (Pa.)


One of the top 2027 Pennsylvania high school quarterbacks from the 2025 season has announced that he’s leaving for a new home.

Per an announcement by Class of 2027 signal caller Mikal Shank Jr., the quarterback has left Harrisburg (Pa.) and is now at Coatesville (Pa.) for his senior season. Shank Jr. last season started 14 games for the Cougars and is arguably one of the state’s top returning players behind center heading into the 2026 campaign.



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