Pennsylvania
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.
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.
“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.
“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.”
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.
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.
“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.”
Pennsylvania
An Outpouring of Frustration Over Pennsylvania’s Rapid Data Center Growth – Inside Climate News
The latest example of burgeoning opposition to rapid data-center development in Pennsylvania came at a town hall meeting overflowing with frustration about how the state is managing the surge.
As about 225 people watched, more than 20 speakers in the two-hour online forum late Wednesday spoke about resistance to an industry they blame for rising electricity prices, heavy water use, noise pollution and rural industrialization. Gov. Josh Shapiro, who has tried to thread the needle of welcoming data centers while proposing some guardrails, was a frequent target.
“This is a public trust and transparency issue,” said Jennifer Dusart, a small business owner and resident of Mechanicsburg, near the state capital. “Too many Americans are finding out about these projects after decisions have been made. We have been bulldozed over, and when citizens have raised concerns, they are often dismissed as uninformed, emotional or anti-progress.”
According to the Data Center Proposal Tracker, Pennsylvania has nearly 60 data centers that have been officially proposed, are in early planning stages, have received approval to build or are under construction.
Karen Feridun of the environmental nonprofit Better Path Coalition, which organized the town hall, said the Pennsylvania Data Center Resistance Facebook group she started in January with a few dozen members now has more than 12,000 followers. Kelly Donia of East Whiteland Township in southeastern Pennsylvania, who lives near a proposed data center, said she’s a registered Democrat who had been excited about speculation in 2024 that Shapiro would be the Democratic vice presidential candidate. But she said she no longer supports him because he has courted data centers. “He is losing his base,” she said. “I want him to hear this loud and freaking clear. I’m going to make it my job to make sure that man never gets elected again for any office.”
While an Emerson College survey in November found that Pennsylvanians were split on data-center development—38 percent supported it, while 35 percent opposed it—opposition to such development close to home was more pronounced. A February poll of registered voters in the state by Quinnipiac University found even more pushback: 68 percent said they would oppose a data center for AI in their community.
Neither the Data Center Coalition, an industry group, nor Pennsylvania Data Center Partners, a developer of large data centers, responded to requests for comment, though industry advocates have said the growth will bring jobs and tax revenue to the state.
The Shapiro administration said it seeks to protect communities while reaping the economic benefits of the booming data center industry.
“If companies want the Commonwealth’s full support — including access to tax credits and faster permitting — they must meet strict expectations around transparency, environmental protection, and community impact,” Rosie Lapowsky, a Shapiro spokesperson, said in a statement. “This is about setting a higher bar for projects, not lowering it, and ensuring development happens responsibly and in a way that benefits Pennsylvanians.”
In February, Shapiro proposed standards as part of his budget address, including that new data centers seeking state support must either provide their own power rather than drawing it from the grid, or fully fund their power needs and the transmission infrastructure that comes with them.
Feridun said Shapiro did not respond to multiple invitations to attend the town hall, which she thinks the state should have hosted to give people a chance to express their concerns about data centers.
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Colby Wesner of the activist group Concerned Citizens of Montour County, which successfully opposed a data center, criticized House lawmakers for passing the Shapiro-supported HB 2151, which would require state officials to draft a model ordinance that towns could use to respond to data center applications.
Supporters say its use would be voluntary and it would help local officials protect quality of life in their communities. But Wesner believes it will benefit the industry if enacted: “There is absolutely no way this ordinance won’t be a data center developer’s dream.”
Donia urged townships to change their zoning so they have the legal right to deny data center applications in places they don’t want them. Without carefully zoned land, towns are vulnerable to lawsuits from developers, she said.
“If you’ve got terrible ordinances in your township, and you add in bad zoning, guess what? You get a hyperscale data center,” she said.
The surge in data center projects in Pennsylvania has been driven by tax breaks for developers, as allowed by a 2021 law that lawmakers should repeal, said Republican state Rep. Jamie Walsh, who spoke at the town hall event. In Virginia, the state with the most data centers, developers have to pay a sales and use tax, but Pennsylvania doesn’t require that, he said.
“That has made Pennsylvania a target. In Virginia, they have to pay tax on the contents of those buildings. Pennsylvania will never realize that. That is why we’ve become ground zero,” said Walsh, who represents Luzerne County in northeast Pennsylvania.
State Sen. Katie Muth, a Democrat who represents part of the Philadelphia suburbs, plans to introduce a bill to place a three-year moratorium on data center development so state and local governments can first study and plan for the industry. She announced the bill in a legislative memo in February and expects to introduce it soon, a spokesman said.
Muth told activists at the town hall that the data center industry has not done enough to fully disclose its plans to the public. ”This has all been planned long before any of us had a clue, so don’t feel that you missed all these things,” she said. “You were supposed to; no one wanted you to know about it.”
Michael Sauers, a retired school teacher from Bloomsburg, southwest of Scranton, called on officials to amend the Pennsylvania Municipalities Planning Code, a regulation first published in 1970.
“This has to be strengthened to empower communities to be able to say no to unwanted development that is being shoved down their throats,” he said. “Communities must be empowered to reject top-down development that gives them little or no voice in the future.”
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Pennsylvania
Man arrested for allegedly posting hit list, threatening more than a dozen Pennsylvania lawmakers
LEBANON, Pa. — A Lebanon County, Pennsylvania man is charged with making terroristic threats and accused of creating a hit list of 20 Democrats, many from the Philadelphia region.
Adam Berryhill’s X handle goes by Pennsylvania Militia.
On it, state police say he posted, “I can’t wait for Memorial Day Operation.”
His thread also displayed guns, and he called local politicians gun-grabbing communists. His alleged hit list included state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta of North Philadelphia.
“I’ll tell you to a certain degree, not that much shock. You know this is not the first time I’ve been the victim of threats,” Kenyatta told ABC Philadelphia affiliate WPVI.
He says the threats have no impact on his governing.
State police say among the other local Democrats named by Berryhill are congressional candidates Sharif Street, Chris Raab and others, like state Rep. Morgan Cephas.
A routine investigation by the state police detail assigned to state House Speaker Joanna McClinton led to the discovery of the alleged terroristic threats.
Berryhill was arrested and charged last week.
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“It’s not about being a Democrat or Republican or an independent. This is about American belief, that in America, Philadelphia, where it all started, that you get to say you believe without any threat of violence,” Kenyatta said.
Court records say Berryhill also criticized Republicans. In another post, he said they need to stop whining and claimed the only solution is war.
Charging documents say Berryhill has been involuntarily committed in the past and is prohibited from possessing firearms.
“It’s deeply uncomfortable for anybody to be doing a job just serving your neighbors. You did not sign up to be in the crosshairs of someone who is unhinged and violent,” Kenyatta said from his North Philadelphia district offices.
Court records say Berryhill was unable to make bail.
Calls to his public defender have not been returned.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro issued the following statement on the arrest:
“Today, I spoke with Speaker McClinton and Leader Costa about the terroristic threats made against members of their caucuses in the State Legislature. I told them that while these threats of political violence seek to intimidate and silence, my administration will continue to do everything in our power to keep them safe and ensure their members can continue to make their voices heard as the people’s elected representatives.
We are experiencing a dangerous rise in threats of political violence across the Commonwealth and I appreciate the quick action of the Pennsylvania State Police and the Lebanon County District Attorney to charge and arrest the perpetrator. It is also clear a better process is necessary to notify elected officials directly when these threats are made. Lt. Colonel Bivens has spoken extensively with House and Senate leadership and their teams, and the Pennsylvania State Police have instituted a new process to notify members of the General Assembly immediately and directly of any and all threats of violence against them.
It is on all of us to combat hate speech and political violence, and I call on all of my fellow Pennsylvanians and fellow leaders to stand up against this dangerous rising tide of violence we are seeing across our country.”
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Shirley Ann Dailey, 89, of Daytona Beach, Florida (formerly of Montoursville, Pennsylvania), passed away peacefully on February 23, 2026, surrounded by her family at AdventHealth Hospital in Daytona Beach.
Born December 14, 1936, in Sayre, Pennsylvania, she was the daughter of the late John and Laura (Reinbold) White. She met the love of her life, Gordon Ell Dailey whom she shared over 60 years of marriage until his passing in 2023.
Shirley grew up in Buffalo, New York, and Dushore, Pennsylvania. She graduated from Turnpike High School in Sullivan County, Pennsylvania, and continued her education with two years of college. She went on to have a distinguished career spanning more than 40 years. Her professional journey included roles with the Social Security Administration, General Motors, Pennsylvania Department of General Services, and most notably, 30 years of dedicated service with the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT). She served as an Administrative Assistant to the District Executive for PennDOT Engineering District 3-0. Shirley took great pride in her work and spoke fondly of her time at PennDOT throughout her retirement.
In her personal life, Shirley enjoyed collecting artwork, caring for her home, taking walks, bicycling, and vacationing with her family.
Surviving is a son, David (Crista) Dailey of Daytona Beach, Fla.; a grandson, Garrett Dailey, of Daytona Beach, Fla.; sisters, Regina (Drew) Bagley of Shunk, Pa., and Deborah (Ray) Thall of Mechanicsburg, Pa. She is also survived by numerous nieces and nephews.
In addition to her parents and husband, Shirley was preceded in death by a sister, Margaret Pier, and a brother, William White.
Funeral services will be held at 10 a.m. on Wednesday, May 20, 2026, at McCarty-Thomas Funeral Home, 733 Broad Street, Montoursville, Pennsylvania, with Pastor David Smith officiating. Burial will follow in Twin Hills Memorial Park, Muncy. Friends may call from 9 to 10 a.m. Wednesday at the funeral home.
Expressions of sympathy may be sent to the family at mccarthythomas.com.
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