Like many elected Democrats, Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey has been vocal in his support for the United Auto Workers on strike, a labor contest now entering its third week.
But when Casey isn’t praising the picket line, he’s busy raking in donations from political action committees for the “Big Three” automakers, according to Federal Election records.
Casey went on MSNBC with Lawrence O’Donnell on Wednesday, Sept. 27, to talk about the strike.
“When I was with the UAW workers in Bucks County yesterday, Local 2177, these folks told me directly what it means to have a union, what it means to their lives, to their families,” he said.
“They don’t want to strike, but these corporate executives… have gotten these huge payouts — millions of dollars for the CEOs and very little for the workers,” Casey added.
Some of those corporate profits have helped Casey’s campaign.
Donations from General Motors and Ford to Casey’s campaign committee, as well as to Casey’s Leadership PAC Keystone America, total $67,500 since 2007, according to FEC records.
Lobbyists who work for the Big Three have also been generous to Casey, giving him another $66,400. That figure includes donations from lobbyists working for Stellantis-NV, which, while headquartered overseas, includes the Chrysler brand and has several auto manufacturing plants in the U.S.
Requests for comment to Casey’s campaign and Senate office were not returned.
In that same time period, the UAW has contributed $20,000 to Pennsylvania’s senior senator.
“As with so many issues, Bob Casey wants to have it both ways and puts his feet in two buckets at the same time,” said Charlie Gerow, a Republican political consultant and pundit.
“It’s always difficult to tell where Bob Casey truly stands. The issue of abortion is another prime example. He says he’s pro-life, but he votes pro-choice, so which is it? The same can be said of the UAW issue and many other issues,” Gerow said.
With the 2024 election less than 400 days away, Casey already has his first Republican challenger. Two weeks ago, Republican businessman and former hedge fund executive Dave McCormick announced his candidacy.
A progressive Democrat has also announced a run to Casey’s left. Blaine Forkner from Allegheny County threw his hat in the race last week.
Pennsylvania U.S. Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) and U.S. Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-Montgomery County) have joined the chorus of Democrats calling on Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) to resign in the wake of federal bribery and corruption charges.
However, Casey is keeping some of the campaign cash he received from Menendez in the past.
In a statement Tuesday, Casey called serving in the U.S. Senate “a sacred trust.”
“The specific allegations outlined in the federal indictment indicate to me that Sen. Menendez violated that trust repeatedly. While he is entitled to the presumption of innocence, serving in public office is a privilege that demands a higher standard of conduct. Sen. Menendez should resign.”
A majority of U.S. Senate Democrats now say Menendez should step down, though the top Democrat — Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) continues to stand by the embattled senator.
Menendez, who sits on the Foreign Relations Committee, is accused of pressuring several government agencies to help his business associates. Those associates, many with interests in Egypt, allegedly bribed him with cash, a sports car, an apartment, and even gold bars. Investigators found about $500,000 in cash and gold bars in Menendez’s home.
The senator insists he will not resign, saying he regularly withdrew money from the bank to keep at home because, growing up as a child of immigrants from Cuba, he learned a culture of fearing government confiscation of private wealth.
Menendez grew up in Union City, N.J.
Menedez donated generously from his U.S. Senate committee to fellow Democrats over the years, including $26,500 to Casey throughout three previous campaigns. On Tuesday, Casey announced he would be donating Menendez’s most recent donation of $10,000 to an “unspecified charity,” according to The Hill, but he was keeping the rest.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee cried foul.
“Bob Casey said he’s only giving back some of the money he received from corrupt Bob Menendez,” the NRSC said in a statement. “Why is Casey keeping $16,500 if he thinks Menendez’s money is dirty?”
Republicans have begun referring to Menendez as “Gold Bar Bob” in reference to the bullion found in his home.
The Pennsylvania Democrat is seeking a fourth term in the U.S. Senate next year.
Another recipient of Menendez money is Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), who received $5,000 for his 2022 campaign. Fetterman was the first member of the U.S. Senate to call for Menendez to resign over the most recent charges. A Fetterman spokesperson told The Messenger, “We are in the process of returning the money in envelopes stuffed with $100 bills.”
“Sen. Menendez should resign,” Fetterman posted on social media. “He’s entitled to the presumption of innocence, but he cannot continue to wield influence over national policy, especially given the serious and specific nature of the allegations.
“I hope he chooses an honorable exit and focuses on his trial.”
New Jersey Congressman Andy Kim (D) has already declared he will run against Menendez in the 2024 primary.
“After calls to resign, Sen. Menendez said, ‘I am not going anywhere.’ As a result, I feel compelled to run against him. Not something I expected to do, but N.J. deserves better. We cannot jeopardize the Senate or compromise our integrity,” Kim posted on X.
Sen. Bob Casey’s brother-in-law began state-based lobbying for a Medicaid managed-care company last year, just months before a pivotal and likely damaging report on the health care company from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services was poised for release.
The federal audit into Keystone First and other similar companies by the U.S. Department of Health’s inspector general came after Casey (D) pushed for it in the wake of an investigative reporting series by the Dallas Morning News alleging some Medicaid managed care organizations, or MCOs, were boosting profits by denying care or benefits to patients.
“Of the 50 pediatric skilled nursing service request denials in our sample, 10 were completely denied when they should have been partially allowed,” the audit found. It gave a special focus to pediatric skilled nursing payment requests “because of the vulnerability of the pediatric population and due to concerns raised in the Dallas Morning News article.”
The audit further noted that Keystone First was selected for the audit, “because it had the highest number of denied services of any Medicaid MCO in Pennsylvania during calendar years 2018 and 2019 (audit period).”
Casey’s brother-in-law, Patrick Brier, registered as a lobbyist for Keystone First with the Pennsylvania Department of State in June 2022. The inspector general for the U.S. Department of Health released its audit in December that year, days before Christmas.
Brier’s lobbying registration qualified him for that kind of work only at the state level.
Source: PA lobbyist search website
“Mr. Brier is not now and never has been engaged as a federal lobbyist on behalf of Keystone First,” said Scott Caulfield, a Harrisburg attorney who, according to his own description, specializes in “professional compliance and ethics due diligence work.” Caulfield is listed as an authorized representative on Brier’s lobbyist registration, and said in an email he was also authorized by Brier to answer on his behalf in response to questions from Broad + Liberty.
“In fact, Mr. Brier does not engage in any federal lobbying work whatsoever. Mr. Brier does not receive any compensation from, or have any financial interest(s) relating to, any firm or other person that lobbies any member of the United States Congress, for any purpose,” Caulfield concluded.
While it is true Brier has not been engaged as a federal lobbyist on behalf of Keystone First, Caulfield did not contest the assertion Brier has done state-based lobbying for the company.
Regardless, Brier’s work for the MCO, especially considering the close timing to the release of the audit, could give the perception of a conflict of interest given that the audit was largely spurred by Sen. Casey.
Sen. Casey’s office did not respond to a request for comment. A message requesting comment from Keystone First was not immediately returned.
The issue of a conflict of interest between Casey and Brier has come up before, in 2002.
Brier was part of a law firm that helped a Luzerne County-based nursing home negotiate a settlement with the federal government after it was found the nursing home had over $2 million “in Medicare overcharges to the federal government and unspecified Medicaid undercharges to the state government between 1990 and 1997,” according to a report from the Wilkes Barre Times-Leader.
Casey was criticized by citizens and local officials in his home county for taking credit in campaign commercials during the 2002 Democratic gubernatorial primary against former Philadelphia Mayor Ed Rendell for exposing financial corruption in nursing homes as auditor general, but somehow failed to notice the problems at the Luzerne-based home, Valley Crest. Critics at the time suggested Casey failed to sufficiently challenge officials in his own party who had long supported his political aspirations.
One elected official at the time “questioned whether the Democratic commissioners decided to hire a firm [for the settlement negotiations] with ties to Casey as a safeguard against a state audit,” the Times-Leader reported.
Casey responded by saying that the only reason people were aware of the familial connection was because he had proactively listed it on a disclosure form as something would likely be perceived as a conflict of interest.
Two other stories this year have also put Casey under the ethical spotlight.
In February, Politicoreported that “Patrick Casey, the brother of Pennsylvania Democratic Sen. Bob Casey who joined Dentons Global Advisors Government Relations last year as a partner, registered to lobby in the fall, and reported lobbying the Senate on issues ranging from implementation of the CHIPS and Science Act to online travel policies last year, disclosures show.”
Just this week, the New York Postreported that Casey’s other brother, Matt, works at a personal-injury law firm which has donated “hundreds of thousands” to Casey’s campaigns over the years, and Casey “has tapped one of [the firm’s] partners to help him nominate federal judges.”
The story also noted that the nominating process mentioned was part of a “mutually beneficial” agreement between Casey and now retired Senator Pat Toomey, a Republican. As part of that agreement “each [would] appoint a co-chair and 10 panel members on a bipartisan basis to vet federal judicial nominees for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania starting in 2011, according to a comtemporary [sic] Casey press release,” the Post story said.
Finally, the Republican site Breitbart noted that in 2018, Casey was months late filing a required disclosure of a stock sale of an Ohio energy company by one of his children. The sale was notable because the company at issue, which also had power plants in western Pennsylvania, was heavily lobbying the federal government on regulatory issues while one of the company’s subsidiaries was facing bankruptcy.
Broad + Libertyfollowed up on that story by requesting comment again from Casey on that issue, but that request was not returned.
No one has yet formally announced a campaign to run against Casey, the Scranton Democrat who is serving in his third term. It’s also no secret that Dave McCormick, a businessman and former under secretary of the U.S. Treasury for International Affairs who lost a Senate bid in 2020 to fellow Republican Mehmet Oz, is likely to run again in 2024.
Americans For Prosperity Action announced Wednesday it is throwing its weight behind the Republican in his campaign against incumbent Sen. Bob Casey Jr. in 2024. The endorsement comes despite the fact that the author and former hedge fund CEO who ran against Dr. Mehmet Oz for the Republican nomination last year has not announced another bid for office.
He is, however, widely expected to eventually enter the race.
The political action committee, affiliated with the free-market organization Americans For Prosperity, announced other U.S. Senate endorsements on Wednesday as well. They included U.S. Sen. Pete Ricketts of Nebraska and retired U.S. Army Captain Sam Brownof Nevada.
“The last three election cycles have made it clear that if we want better policies from Washington, we need better candidates who can lead our country forward,” said Nathan Nascimento, the PAC’s executive director. “AFP Action is prepared for an unprecedented election cycle engagement in 2024. We’ll be engaging in more primaries at every level of office and using our unmatched data capabilities to bring new voters into the political process. We are ready to deploy the strongest and most effective grassroots army in the country to change the outcome of critical races and elect champions for policies that will empower Americans.”
McCormick, who served in the 82nd Airborne Division during the Persian Gulf War, was a Treasury undersecretary for President George W. Bush. He was CEO of Bridgewater Associates, one of the world’s largest hedge funds, from 2020 to 2022.
McCormick has been traveling the state, meeting potential voters, and promoting his book, “Superpower in Peril.”
Casey, who shares a name with his famous father who had served as Pennsylvania governor, is seeking his fourth term.
Perhaps taking a populist cue from Sen. John Fetterman (D) in 2022, Casey said on his campaign website he will “stand up to powerful corporate interests and make the lives of hardworking Pennsylvanians a little bit easier.”
Between 2017 and 2022, Casey’s top contributors were law firms, lobbyists, finance, insurance, and real estate firms, according to FollowtheMoney.org
“Pennsylvania cannot have another term of Bob Casey rubber-stamping Biden’s big-government agenda. Pennsylvanians have seen enough from Casey to know that he’s not going to stand up to the status quo,” said AFP Action Senior Advisor Ashley Kingensmith. “They’ve have had enough of record-breaking spending, redistribution, and constraining regulation from Washington—and they’re the ones paying the price.
“That’s why we’re sending out the signal and encouraging Dave McCormick to enter this race and give the Keystone State the representation it needs in Washington. Should McCormick choose to run, he will have the backing and enthusiasm of our grassroots who are ready to send him to Washington,” she said.
Nascimento added, “This is an example of AFP Action getting involved earlier in the election cycle. We’re identifying strong candidates who have the qualities and principles we want to see representing Americans in Washington. Dave McCormick is one of those candidates.”
Should McCormick decide to run, the Democrats have their swords out.
Maddy McDaniel, senior communications adviser to the Pennsylvania Democratic Party, said, “David McCormick is a Wall Street mega-millionaire who has sold out Pennsylvanians to make millions for himself, his wealthy friends, and the Chinese government. Sen. Bob Casey has spent his career delivering for Pennsylvania families, while David McCormick has shipped American jobs overseas and prioritized China over Pennsylvania.”
