The campaign for Pennsylvania Republican Senate candidate Dave McCormick attempted to highlight crime driven by border insecurity — but in doing so, the campaign appeared to mix up two entirely separate Philadelphias.
The campaign page for McCormick, a hedge fund businessman running against incumbent Democratic Sen. Bob Casey, reposted a crime story from the far-right account End Wokeness involving an unauthorized immigrant in Philadelphia who was accused of a shooting on behalf of the violent MS-13 street gang. The gang originated in California but is associated with Salvadoran immigrants.
"MS-13 gang members are terrorizing Philadelphians because of Harris & Casey's radical open border policies," McCormick's account wrote, trying to tie his opponent's political record to the crime.
There's just one problem, noted Casey's communications director Maddy McDaniel in response: "Dave, this story is from Philadelphia, Mississippi — not Philadelphia, PA."
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Nick Field, a correspondent for the Pennsylvania Capital-Star, remarked in response to the exchange, "This feels like one that's gonna go viral: The McCormick campaign can't tell Philadelphia, Pennsylvania from Philadelphia, Mississippi."
Philadelphia, Mississippi, is a small town of 7,000 halfway between Jackson and the Alabama state line. It is known for being the site of the gruesome murder of three civil rights workers by the Ku Klux Klan in 1964, and was later the spot where Ronald Reagan kicked off his 1980 presidential campaign with a speech on states' rights — which many critics suspected was an intentional choice to signal his sympathy for civil rights opponents.
McCormick, who also ran for Senate in 2022 but was bested in the primary by celebrity TV doctor Mehmet Oz, has faced ongoing accusations from Democrats that he doesn't live in Pennsylvania — an accusation that dogged Oz throughout his campaign as well.