Senate candidate Dave McCormick pledges to support Israel and fight antisemitism
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Senate candidate Dave McCormick pledges to support Israel and fight antisemitism

"We have to stand with Israel in defending its very existence."— Dave McCormick

Senate candidate Dave McCormick and Laura Cherner (Photo by Toby Tabachnick)
Senate candidate Dave McCormick and Laura Cherner (Photo by Toby Tabachnick)

At a town hall-style event on Oct. 10, Republican candidate for Senate Dave McCormick vowed to support Israel and fight antisemitism if he unseats Democratic Sen. Bob Casey, who has represented Pennsylvania since 2007.

The “Coffee and Conversations” event was sponsored by the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh at its offices and moderated by Laura Cherner, director of the Federation’s Community Relations Council. The Federation hosted a similar event for Casey on Oct. 9.

Cherner began her questioning by asking McCormick about the Hamas/Israel war, and how he views the role of the U.S. in ensuring that the hostages held in Gaza are released and that the threat of Iran and its proxies does not continue to escalate.

McCormick, quoting podcaster Dan Senor, said that on Oct. 7, “a flare went up,” bringing some harsh realizations to the fore.

“You know, it’s dark and a flare goes up, and you see when the flare goes up who your friends are and who your enemies are,” McCormick said. “You see more clearly when the flare goes up of what’s really going on. Say, in the military, when a flare goes up, you see the lay of the land, the battlefield. And I think that’s what happened on Oct. 7.”

McCormick and his wife visited Israel in January, he said, and met with survivors of the Hamas attack, families of hostages, members of the Israel Defense Forces and Israeli President Isaac Herzog.

“You can’t come away from that without thinking this is Israel’s existential moment, where its very existence is being called into question,” McCormick said. “And since Oct. 7, that’s only heightened with the threat, not only from Hamas, but from Hezbollah and from Iran… And so the first reflection is, we have to stand with Israel in defending its very existence. But the second reaction is, when the flare went up, we also saw another fight at home.”

McCormick said while he was aware of “antisemitism lurking beneath the surface in our society,” he was “shocked, dumbfounded by what we saw after Oct. 7 in our society, in our communities, in Squirrel Hill, where I live, scrawled onto the walls of synagogues with people protesting on the streets, and, of course, our campuses.”

He mentioned a Jewish student at the University of Pittsburgh draped in American and Israeli flags — and a McCormick for Senate shirt — who was assaulted last spring, and anti-Israel demonstrations on the University of Pennsylvania’s campus.

“So when the flare went up… we saw that many of our enemies are here at home, either through the explicit antisemitism they’re demonstrating, or even worse, the culpability of weakness, the lack of moral courage, the inability from positions of power to stand up against the fight here at home.”

What happened on Oct. 7, he said, “is a test for all of us.”

Cherner asked McCormick to comment about the antisemitic tropes and conspiracy theories spread by some far-right Republican politicians.

“Antisemitism isn’t, unfortunately, unique to a party,” McCormick acknowledged. “We have it all over the political spectrum.”

He said an elected official must stand unequivocally against antisemitism “in all its forms.”

“I believe that I have been a voice for clarity on this issue from Day 1,” he said.

McCormick called out Casey for saying that he strongly supports Israel while endorsing Rep. Summer Lee, who has been an outspoken critic of the Jewish state. Lee issued a statement on Oct. 7, along with Mayor Ed Gainey and County Executive Sara Innamorato, that was condemned locally and nationally as being offensive and inappropriate.

“I don’t think you can say you’re going to be strong with Israel and stand up against antisemitism and simultaneously endorse Summer Lee,” McCormick said. “And then when Summer Lee comes out with her statement, saying, ‘I’m against the statement, I’m very much against the statement, but I’m going to hold my endorsement.’… I don’t think you can have it both ways. I think this was a test.”

McCormick said that support for Israel should not be a partisan issue. He gave a nod to Democratic Sen. John Fetterman as an example, saying that while the two disagree on many issues, they are on the same page when it comes to Israel.

“I will work with whoever, whatever political persuasion, on issues as it relates to Israel,” McCormick said.

He stressed he would be “vigorous in action against antisemitism,” including “defunding the universities that have antisemitic behavior,” ending the tax-exempt status for their endowments and ending federal grants.

The Senate hopeful also said he “will stand for strangling Iran,” and blamed the Biden administration, and Casey, for the growth of Iran’s coffers, which finance terrorism against Israel.

“So, if you want someone who’s going to be vigorous in action against antisemitism and against the source the original sin, the Iran deal of 2015 — which gave $100 billion back to Iran, which is used to now kill Israelis and Americans — if you want someone who’s going to fight against that, then you should vote for me if you’re Jewish, regardless of what party,” he said.

McCormick has been criticized by Jewish groups and others for his investment in Rumble, a social media site popular among the far-right that has platformed antisemitic conspiracy theories. Financial disclosures from the Federal Election Commission show that McCormick has invested up to $5 million in Rumble.

When questioned by Cherner about Rumble, and whether the federal government should hold tech companies accountable for hate speech, he said that “what’s happening in social media is a challenge across social media.”

While the candidate said he is a strong proponent of First Amendment protections, he is in favor of acting “to make sure that our social media platforms are eliminating antisemitism and hate speech consistently and with urgency.”

McCormick said that being criticized for investing in Rumble is akin to condemning investors in other social media platforms like Twitter (now X), “because every single one of these social media platforms has hate speech that goes up, and it’s supposed to be taken down under the [platforms’] policies…. This is a pervasive problem across social media, and it’s something that I think we need to address, and I’m in favor of addressing it all.”

Shifting gears to abortion access and reproductive rights, McCormick noted that he is the father of six daughters and has discussed the topic “around the dinner table.”

“I do believe that this is a states’ rights issue,” he said. “I believe voters should decide. It’s so polarizing; voters should elect people that reflect their views on this. I don’t think it should be decided by a judge.”

He said he is not in favor of a national ban on abortion, nor any national legislation on the issue.

On the topic of immigration and border security, McCormick stressed his support of “legal immigration,” and said the current system is in “dramatic need of reform.”

“We are a country of immigrants. Let me start there,” he said. “We’re also a country of laws. What is happening on the border is indefensible, indefensible by any measure, and it is jeopardizing the security of all Americans.” He said that 200 immigrants in the country illegally were “identified, apprehended and identified on the terrorist watch list,” and said the surge of Fentanyl deaths can be attributed to those illegally crossing the border.

An audience member submitted a question asking McCormick if — in light of the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting and its perpetrator being motivated by anti-immigrant rhetoric — he was willing to “describe immigrants as deserving of respect and compassion.”

“I believe many of them, probably the majority of people, certainly the majority of people that are coming across the border illegally, have the best motivations,” McCormick said. “They want to just be part of America. But I think…anyone who doesn’t acknowledge what’s happening and the risk it’s posing to Americans, puts us in a really precarious position. So I’m very careful to make sure that what I’m saying is factual.

“On one hand, I think we have to recognize that the people that want to come — even though they’re breaking the law to come into our country, many of them are well-meaning. That doesn’t mean the country is going to be able to make itself available to that many people. But we also have to recognize… the security risk it’s posing to all of us is a very real thing.” PJC

Toby Tabachnick can be reached at ttabachnick@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.

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