Bob Casey Jr. rode a wave of U.S. Senate reforms in 2006, standing out with other Democrats who have vowed to end a culture of scandal and self-dealing in Washington, D.C.
A Pennsylvania political figure whose late father served as governor, Casey revealed an ethics plan at the restaurant owned by lobbyist Jack Abramoff. He later boiled because of an ad in which his Republican opponent questioned his integrity.
Nearly two decades later, Casey faces an uphill fight for a fourth term, along with accusations that friends and family benefited from his political career. In a family with a mark on Pennsylvania politics, several Casey siblings have seen their own politics-adjacent careers intersect with the senator’s.
There’s a brother who registered to lobby for a semiconductor manufacturer right after Casey supported a bill to expand opportunities for the industry. There is another brother whose law partner helps Casey recommend federal judges and whose firm employees have donated more than $225,000 to Casey’s campaigns, according to Federal Election Commission documents. And there’s a sister whose printing company received more than half a million dollars in work from Casey’s campaigns, records show.
Casey, 64, is not accused of breaking any laws or violating ethics rules. But Republican Party operatives working to unseat him in one of the nation’s key Senate elections this year are drawing attention to those and other family ties. The National Republican Senatorial Committee also compared Casey to President Joe Biden, whose family members have been accused of trading on his famous surname.
“It’s called the Casey Cartel,” says the narrator in an ad from the NRSC. “Because like Biden, Bob Casey gets elected and his family gets richer.”
The senator’s defenders point to a long commitment to ethics reform, including his crusade against influence peddling and revolving door practices involving members of Congress, their staff and Washington’s K Street lobbying firms. Elements of the plan Casey was promoted as a candidate in 2006 and became a account signed into law by then-president George W. Bush.
Casey too expressed support eight years ago for former President Donald Trump’s push to “drain the swamp” for a five-year lobbying ban against former executive branch officials.
In a written statement for this article, Casey’s campaign manager, Tiernan Donohue, characterized the GOP messaging as “baseless attacks” and a “blatant attempt to divert attention” from the potential responsibilities of his Republican opponent, Dave McCormick. Donohue noted previous media scrutiny about McCormick’s campaign finance practices, as well as about the campaign finance practices of Bridgewater Associates investments in Chinese companies during McCormick’s time manage the hedge fund. McCormick acknowledged his work at the hedge fund while campaigning on proposals for tougher restrictions on US investments in China.
“Senator Bob Casey is known throughout the Commonwealth for his commitment to high ethical standards and quality public service,” Donohue said in the release.
The case the GOP is making against Casey reflects a playbook the party is using against other vulnerable Democrats this year, with party control of the Senate at stake.
Sen. Jon Tester of Montana, who faces a challenge from former aerospace executive Tim Sheehy, is under scrutiny for his relationships with lobbyists. Senator Sherrod Brown, who is running against businessman Bernie Moreno in Ohio, faced questions in a HuffPost story this year about how his pro-labor record fits into supporting a merger involving the grocery chain Kroger. Democrats, in turn, have labeled McCormick and other GOP Senate candidates as wealthy elitists with unscrupulous business practices, from Sheehy’s work in aerial firefighting to Moreno’s work. days as a car salesman.
“Bob Casey and his family have demonstrated a pattern of corruption that should enrage Pennsylvanians,” said NRSC spokesman Philip Letsou. “Pennsylvanians are struggling to make ends meet, but career politician Bob Casey’s top priority appears to be enriching his family.”
Defeating Casey this fall won’t be easy. He has won each of his three Senate terms by comfortable margins and is respected across the aisle. McCormick, for his part, has been criticized for the time he spends in a rented house in Connecticut.
“I’m true to my core, a Keystone State guy. I know the Casey family, and the Casey family’s pride in this state is enormous,” Scott Hoeflich, who served as chief of staff to the late Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter, the former Republican who became a Democrat while serving with Casey, said in a interview. “Bob Casey Jr. is a great guy. … He has always been an upstanding public servant with the highest standards of integrity.”
Several of the Casey family ties that Republicans are examining have been covered by other news organizations in recent years. And some of the connections seem more coincidental or more distant than others. None of the family members mentioned in this article responded to requests for comment.
Casey’s brother-in-law Patrick Brier registered in 2021 as a state lobbyist for Keystone First, a company that was being audited in a federal investigation of Medicaid managed care providers that Casey had requested in his role as a Democrat on the Senate Committee on Aging. The connection was first reported by Broad + Liberty, a right-wing outlet from Pennsylvania. There is no record that Brier ever lobbied for the company at the federal level. O audit reportreleased six months after Brier began lobbying for the company, criticized Keystone First, concluding that the company “failed to comply with federal and state requirements” by denying dozens of requests for care or service.
One of Casey’s brothers, Patrick Casey, has registered to lobby the Senate on behalf of a semiconductor company in late 2022 – a move first reported by Politico. From him disclosure statement noted that his work focused on US semiconductor policy and the implementation of CHIPS and the Science Act, passed earlier that year. In January, Patrick Casey’s company reported that he was no longer lobbying for the client.
“Pat Casey is not lobbying Senator Casey’s office,” Casey spokeswoman Mairead Lynn said in an emailed statement. “Senator Casey supported and voted for the 2007 law that prohibits family members from lobbying Senate offices, and he abides by that law.”
Away from the lobbying scene, Casey’s state and federal campaigns have spent nearly $600,000 with Universal Printing Co., the Scranton-area print shop run by the senator’s sister, Margi McGrath, who identifies herself as the company’s representative. CEO It is business owner, according to FEC records. McGrath and her husband, William, a Universal executive, have donated more than $50,000 to Casey’s campaigns and affiliated PACs over the years, records show. O New York Post first reported about Casey’s use of her sister as a campaign saleswoman last year.
Casey, who before being elected to the Senate served as state auditor general and treasurer and lost the 2002 gubernatorial primary, paid Universal more than $255,000 for work on those campaigns, according to state documents. The $325,000 his Senate fund paid to his sister’s company represents a third of his campaign printing spending and about 15% of Universal’s $2.1 million in federal campaign work since 2005, show the records. Universal’s list of political clients includes the Democratic National Committee and several presidential campaigns.
Hiring a relative for campaign services is legal as long as the campaign pays fair market value for the services, said Kedric Payne, vice president, general counsel and senior director of ethics at the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan voter advocacy group. .
“In this situation where you have someone who not only has other clients that they provide these services to, but appears to be providing legitimate services to that member, it would be difficult to argue that there is a violation,” said Payne, who saw no legal risk in the other issues that Republicans have raised against Casey.
Casey also established close political ties with Ross Feller Casey, a personal injury law firm co-founded by his brother, Matt Casey. Company employees have donated more than $225,000 to Casey’s campaigns since 2005, according to campaign finance disclosures first reported by the New York Post. The company also contributed $100,000 in 2017 to PA Values, a super PAC that at the time supported Casey’s re-election campaign. The company has not donated since then to the super PAC, which remains active, having recently produced an ad that misleadingly uses former President Donald Trump’s words to discourage voting by mail.
Senator Casey called on one of Ross Feller Casey’s other founding partners, Robert Ross, often over the years to lead committees that select candidates for federal judicial appointments, according to press releases from his office. Senators from the incumbent president’s party typically have more influence when recommending nominees. During the Obama administration, Casey continued a tradition, established under his Republican predecessors, of running a bipartisan vetting process that gave his Republican counterparts the ability to choose selection committee members.
Ross did not respond to questions for this article.
Defenders of the process, including Republicans, say it produced quality judges. Former Senator Pat Toomey, a Republican who succeeded Spectre, has been talking a lot of the work he and Casey did together.
“The bipartisan, nonpartisan nominating committee has been and is the gold standard for how senators should vet and nominate candidates to the U.S. courts,” said Hoeflich, the former Specter aide, when asked about GOP attacks on process. “This is politics at its worst: trying to manipulate information to create false narratives and distract people from the real problems.”
Others offered different opinions. A source familiar with Toomey’s role in the process recalled that he was more biased toward Casey during the Obama years and argued that Toomey’s selections for screening panels had more serious legal recourse, while a former Toomey staffer had a more favorable memory of Casey’s work. . Both requested anonymity to share their thoughts.
“We were proud of the process,” said the second source. “I think that is borne out when you look at all the judge positions we were able to fill in a timely manner, and they were all of a high caliber.”
A former senior staffer for former Sen. Rick Santorum, the Republican Casey unseated in 2006, said GOP operatives are making “much ado about nothing” with their attacks.
“I never questioned Bob Casey’s ethics, even when he was our opponent in the 2006 election,” said the official, who requested anonymity to share candid opinions about the Republican Party’s messaging. “I never thought the Caseys were anything other than stand-up people.”
This story originally appeared on NBCNews.com read the full story
