Oz slams McCormick for his firm failing Pennsylvania teachers while collecting half a billion in fees as attacks continue to escalate
PENNSYLVANIA – New reporting from the New York Times sheds light on how Connecticut hedge fund executive David McCormick’s life as a hedge fund executive negatively impacted Pennsylvania’s teachers:
Before he entered Pennsylvania’s Senate race, David McCormick oversaw a giant hedge fund that invested billions of dollars for the retirement plans of the state’s teachers.
But Mr. McCormick’s company, Bridgewater Associates, delivered such middling profits and charged such high fees that the Pennsylvania teachers’ retirement fund moved to sell off its Bridgewater holdings beginning two years ago.
Overall, Bridgewater’s performance was a contributing factor in nearly a decade of poor returns for the retirement fund, trustees of the fund said in interviews.
The impact is now being felt indirectly by thousands of teachers who have to pay more from their paychecks to fund their retirements, an extra $300 annually in some cases.
The news inspired another attack from New Jersey daytime TV host Mehmet Oz, who attacked McCormick in straight to camera video in front of Pennsylvania’s Public School Employees’ Retirement System (PSERS) building:
This is the second direct attack on McCormick Oz has filmed and shared this week. The previous attack was focused on the Philadelphia Inquirer’s report that the Super PAC supporting McCormick was funded by Democratic donors and “Never Trump” Republicans.
The attacks come the same week that the Associated Press ran a piece highlighting how McCormick’s campaign is based on the Connecticut hedge fund executive’s pathetic attempt to re-invent himself as a local Pennsylvanian:
For McCormick, spinning the narrative of a hometown boy-done-good and hewing to the politics of Trumpism is central to his candidacy in a premier battleground Senate race.
But he is facing skepticism — and, as a leading candidate, attack ads — that his international business past is counter to former President Donald Trump’s “America First” governing philosophy and that he’s a carpetbagging political opportunist trying to buy the seat.
Now, instead of Wall Street name-dropping or telling anecdotes about meeting with a Chinese CEO, he’s name-dropping small towns and telling anecdotes about growing up in Pennsylvania.
Read what they’re saying about the latest in the country’s nastiest primary:
- New York Times, McCormick Faces Scrutiny Over Hedge Fund’s Handling of Teacher Pensions: “The dispute is the latest round in a slugfest between Mr. McCormick and Dr. Oz, whose primary contest will help shape one of the most crucial races this year for control of the Senate.”
- PennLive, Dr. Mehmet Oz opens a new line of attack against Pa. Senate rival David McCormick: Money: “In Oz’s formulation, Bridgewater Associates got rich and taxpayers got hosed…‘The buck stops with the CEO,’ Oz said, referring to McCormick. ‘He’s the chief executive officer of the firm. He’s running the firm… He was paid as the CEO. He was responsible as the CEO.’”
- Associated Press, McCormick, ex-hedge fund CEO, aims to be hometown boy in Pennsylvania’s key Senate race: “As CEO of the world’s largest hedge fund, David McCormick wore suits, lived on Connecticut’s ritzy Gold Coast, talked up bipartisanship and described China as America’s most important ‘bilateral relationship.’ Now, as a Republican running for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, McCormick wears jeans and casual dress shirts. He recounts the greatest hits of the right’s culture war attacks on Democrats — paranoia about illegal immigration and the left using school curriculum to teach a history of America that’s “not the America I know” — and he frames China as an ‘existential threat.’”
###