This Controversial Candidate Is Key To The GOP’s 2024 Senate Plan

As the Senate investigates Saudi Arabia’s business interest in professional golf, one possible future senator is revealing little about his own financial ties to the Saudis: David McCormick, the Republican businessman who is widely expected to challenge Democratic Sen. Bob Casey in Pennsylvania.

McCormick is the former CEO of Bridgewater Associates, an investment firm that works with sovereign wealth funds like the one maintained by Saudi Arabia. He reportedly pushed for Bridgewater to demonstrate loyalty to the Saudis amid international outrage over Saudi agents’ murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. And he is married to a fellow financier, Dina Powell McCormick, a longtime Goldman Sachs executive who is known for her links to Saudi officials and recently took a new job partly on government-backed funds, particularly those in the Middle East, and helped Goldman contend for the initial public offering of the Saudi state oil company Aramco. “Her time in the U.S. government and her Arabic-speaking abilities have made Powell McCormick among the best-connected Wall Street executives in the region,” the Journal said.

Simultaneously, she has tried to boost her husband’s political prospects, for instance through a failed bid to win McCormick an endorsement from Trump in Pennsylvania’s 2020 Republican Senate primary and in multiple campaign appearances.

Powell McCormick is now tackling a new post at the merchant bank BDT & MSD Partners and will still be concentrating on sovereign wealth funds, according to the Journal.

Powell McCormick has not yet begun her new job.

A spokesperson for BDT & MSD declined to comment on whether her work will include dealing with the Saudi Public Investment Fund.

Earlier this year, she opened a conference organized by the PIF by moderating a panel with the fund’s chief, Yasir Al-Rumayyan. Powell McCormick had “had the privilege of working with [him] for many, many years,” she noted.

U.S. elections are closely watched by Saudi Arabia, which relies on American military backing for its security. They are especially vital when the Saudis face the risk of a real change to their relationship with the U.S. ― as they did in 2020 when President Joe Biden promised to avenge Khashoggi and as they might in 2024 with months ahead of debate over the golf deal.

The kingdom is already signaling that it will help those who are willing to help it, observers say, and some are heeding the call.

The Saudi PIF has invested $2 billion in a fund run by Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, and $1.5 billion in another fund run by Trump-era Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin.

“The Kushner example is a calling card for Saudi Arabia and what it says is… if you play ball, the Saudis will pay you,” Freeman said.

As he campaigns to take on Biden, Trump is highlighting his Saudi ties, saying the kingdom’s rulers are “great people [who] wanted to help us.”

The Saudi-backed alternative to the PGA Tour announced on Monday that it would move its end-of-season championship from Saudi Arabia to Trump’s golf club in Miami. “Oh look, Saudi Arabia is moving to put more money in Donald Trump’s pocket,” the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) tweeted in response.

For McCormick, the pressure to offer real transparency about his Saudi links seems likely to grow. His wife’s extensive ties merit attention, too, in Freeman’s view: He noted that there is a history of powerful interests trying to manipulate politicians through their spouses, including on national security matters.

The Saudi relationship shows McCormick is unfit for office, according to Maddy McDaniel, a senior communications adviser to the Pennsylvania Democratic Party.

“The real David McCormick is a multimillionaire hedge fund executive who sold out Pennsylvanians to enrich himself and his Wall Street friends,” she wrote in an email. “Pennsylvanians deserve someone fighting every day for their bottom line, not for … the billion-dollar bottom line of the Saudi royal family.”

In his unsuccessful last run for a Pennsylvania Senate seat, McCormick said he would put his assets in a blind trust if he were elected.

Yet more detailed information about his financial interests could be the only way to build greater public confidence.

“My advice is: Number one, don’t have these ties in the first place ― do your best not to make bankroll off of working for dictators,” Freeman said. “But if you can’t do that, the very least you can do is disclose it ― and let the voters decide for themselves how much they care about it.”