Senator Bob Casey’s rival Dave McCormick calls for suspension of “negative advertising”

Dave McCormick, Republican Senate candidate in the US state of Pennsylvania, called on Monday for a suspension of “negative advertising” in his race against incumbent Democrat Bob Casey following the near assassination of Donald Trump.

“In light of the assassination attempt on President Trump in Butler, I agree with President Biden and suggest to Senator @Bob_Casey that we both stop our negative advertising,” McCormick posted on X.

“This is the time when we as Americans must come together and recognize that what makes our country and its people so extraordinary transcends party lines,” the Republican challenger said. “Let’s take some time to put aside the negativity.”

Senator Casey’s campaign alerted The Washington Post on Monday to reports confirming that it began temporarily pulling all of its television ads on Saturday.

“On Saturday night following the shooting, the Casey campaign worked with the networks to temporarily halt advertising,” Casey spokeswoman Maddy McDaniel said in a statement. “The campaign will work in the coming days to resume communications with voters to inform Pennsylvania residents about Senator Casey’s record, his opponent’s record and the importance of this Senate race.”

A campaign official for President Biden’s re-election campaign also announced that same evening that they were “paused all outbound communications and working to pull our (presidential campaign) television ads as quickly as possible.”

McCormick and Casey have both endorsed their party’s likely nominees as Trump and Biden prepare to secure the delegate votes needed to top the Republican and Democratic ticket in November.

Biden, 81, called for national unity in an Oval Office speech on Sunday after Trump’s near-assassination, urging all Americans to “cool the temperature in our politics and remember that while we may disagree, we are not enemies.”

“We are neighbors, we are friends, colleagues, citizens and, most of all, we are fellow Americans,” the president said, saying he was “grateful” that the 78-year-old Trump had survived. “We must stand together.”

McCormick, 58, was at Trump’s rally during the shooting and wrote an eyewitness account for the Journal the next day.

Trump was grazed by a bullet in the right ear, while Corey Comperatore, a beloved father hailed as a “hero” by Trump and Biden, was killed and two other bystanders were injured.

“One inch. That’s how close America came to losing Donald Trump to an assassin’s bullet on Saturday night — and that inch may be a metaphor for how close we are to an internal collapse in the greatest country the world has ever seen,” the Republican Senate candidate wrote, noting that the shots fired by 20-year-old loner Thomas Matthew Crooks “whizzed over my own head, too.”

“Mr. Trump’s critics must recognize that he is neither Hitler nor the devil. He is a legitimate political candidate, and the fight for the presidency should be about ideas and leadership, not slanders that can incite violence,” McCormick said, criticizing House Democrats who had previously introduced a bill to strip the 45th president of Secret Service protection.

The McCormick team has run television ads criticizing Casey for covering up Biden’s mental lapse and for being one of the few Democrats in the Senate to stand by the president after his disastrous performance in the June 27 debate against Trump.

Casey’s campaign produced ads attacking McCormick, a former CEO of the giant hedge fund Bridgewater Associates, accusing him of investing in a “website that platformed Holocaust denial” and of being a “millionaire from Connecticut” who left his native Pennsylvania only to return before running for office.

In May, Keystone Renewal, the Super PAC behind McCormick, announced the purchase of $30 million worth of television ads in Pennsylvania, the New York Times reported.

According to the newspaper, the McCormick and Casey campaigns had already spent at least $82 million on advertising by early June.

Just 112 days before Election Day, Casey is about 4 percentage points ahead of his Republican opponent in the polls, according to aggregator RealClearPolitics.