Senate candidate Dave McCormick led hedge fund that bet against some of Pennsylvania’s most iconic companies

Pennsylvania State Treasurer

In the years that Pennsylvania Senate candidate Dave McCormick led one of the world’s largest hedge funds, the firm bet millions of dollars against some of the state’s biggest and most iconic companies, financial filings show. Under McCormick’s leadership, Bridgewater Associates shorted the stocks of nearly 50 companies headquartered in Pennsylvania, including The Hershey Company and US Steel, a CNN review of records from the US Department of Labor found. Short positions, which are essentially bets that the companies’ stocks will drop, can hurt corporations by depressing their stock prices, making it harder to gain new financing, invest or hire more workers, according to experts. For financial institutions, short positions can be lucrative. But what makes sense as an investor can take on new meaning in politics as McCormick, a Republican making his second bid for Senate, casts himself as a job creator for Pennsylvanians. “Fundamentally, I think Dave McCormick is out of touch with workers,” said Kevin Boltz, who works for Hershey in central Pennsylvania and is a longtime member of the union that represents the company’s employees. “I don’t think this man understands my way of life.” The Pennsylvania race – a face-off between McCormick and three-term Democratic Sen. Bob Casey – is crucial as Republicans try to flip the one or two seats they need to win control of the Senate.