With election day less than two weeks to go, the Senate race between Democratic incumbent Senator Bob Casey and Republican challenger Dave McCormick has gotten very heated. Most polls now give Casey either a slight lead or have the race at a virtual tie, which is the tightest the race has been at any point.
Given McCormick’s history opposing abortion rights and women’s bodily autonomy, the Casey campaign’s latest ad may make the Republican even more unpopular with women voters though.
The ad, titled “Toxic”, focuses on the Republican candidate’s tenure as CEO of Bridgewater Associates, a billion dollar hedge fund based in Connecticut, and specifically with how McCormick reportedly handled allegations of sexual harassment.
Rob Copeland, a finance reporter with the New York Times, reported in his book The Fund a very unflattering portrait of Bridgewater, which includes a work environment where meetings were recorded and therefore accessible to every employee and parties so out of control that there were company policies surrounding strippers. According to Copeland, there was also an environment of sexual harassment, some of which McCormick seemed to have known about first hand. According to one story, after a women who accused her boss of sexual harassment was about to leave the company with severance pay and a settlement that said she couldn’t go public with the incident, McCormick visited her and “told her that if she ever broke the agreement, she would be in litigation for the rest of her life.”
“Women should be allowed to speak about their experience of harassment or a toxic environment in the workplace without fear of retaliation or retribution,” said Tiernan Donohue, Casey’s campaign manager, at a press conference on Friday.
According to Copeland, there was also an environment of sexual harassment, some of which McCormick seemed to have known about first hand. According to one story, after a women who accused her boss of sexual harassment was about to leave the company with severance pay and a settlement that said she couldn’t go public with the incident, McCormick visited her and, “told her that if she ever broke the agreement, she would be in litigation for the rest of her life.”
READ: GOP Senate Candidate Reportedly Threatened, Retaliated Against Sexual Harassment Victims
On Friday, the Casey Campaign held a press conference to discuss McCormick’s alleged history of using NDAs to silence women about their experiences at Bridgewater. “Women should be allowed to speak about their experience of harassment or a toxic environment in the workplace without fear of retaliation or retribution,” said Tiernan Donohue, Casey’s campaign manager.
After discussing the ad, Donohue said, “This is about more than an election, though. Any CEO, of any company, should foster an environment, and oversee that environment, where women are treated with respect and dignity, and where those who feel otherwise are allowed to come forward without fear of retaliation.”
Another speaker at the conference was Julie Roginsky, an advocate of sexual harassment and one of the women who sued former Fox News CEO Roger Ailes for sexual harassment and retaliation. Roginsky talked about what it was like being forced to sign a NDA and how that experience led her to push for legislation to ban pre-dispute NDAs.
“In 2017, I worked for someone running for statewide office in a neighboring state, and I approached him about very very toxic experiences of harassment and other bad behavior that were happening on his campaign. I was immediately reminded that I was bound by an NDA that I could not tell anybody about anything that I had witnessed on that campaign,” she said.
A year later, Roginsky said that another staffer came to her saying she had been sexually assaulted by another staffer. However, because of the NDA, Roginsky could do nothing to help. In 2019, however, Roginsky and Gretchen Carlson, who also sued Ailes for sexual harassment, co-founded a non-profit Lift Our Voices to end pre-dispuit NDA’s and other forms on intimidation of harassment for victims in the work place.
In 2022, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand proposed the Speak Now Act, which banned pre-dispute NDAs from being enforced at the federal and state levels. It passed the Senate unanimously and through the House 315-109, with 100 Republicans joining every Democratic in passing the bill. On December 7, 2022, Joe Biden signed the bill into law.
Nancy Erika Smith, a Civil rights lawyer who represented both Roginsky and Carlson in their lawsuits against Ailes, added that Casey’s support for legislation ending forced arbitration for sexual assault and harassment victims shows where he stands on these issues.
When talking about McCormick, Smith said, “I don’t understand how any woman could agree to vote for a man who is silencing Republican women and Democratic women who are being victimized, who have been victimized. Let’s also not overlook the equal pay claims when he was CEO, that women were not paid equally. And he is silencing them also.”
The ad ran by the Casey campaign also mentioned another woman who Copeland talked about in The Fund. The woman, who had accused a Bridgewater executive of groping her, later left to start her own company. After sitting down with McCormick for what she thought was a business meeting years later, he allegedly said to her, “Maybe the issue is that you aren’t being a supportive public presence for us,” when he and Bridgewater founder Ray Dalio found out that reporters were looking into the incident. According to the Casey campaign, “She was later reported to have understood McCormick’s comments to mean that he, ‘had just wanted to remind her that [Bridgewater] had the power to destroy her business if she didn’t toe the line.’”
Many other publications have reached out to the McCormick campaign about the allegations in the book since its publication last November, but so far the campaign has been quiet about the issues brought up. In a USA Today article, McCormick’s campaign spokeswoman, Elizabeth Gregory, said the stories resurfacing was a “retread from a year-old book.”
McCormick’s campaign has also released a new ad called ‘Empowerment’ with former female co-workers and employees of his saying how great it was to work for him. In response, Donohue said that the ad was not representative for all of the women who worked for McCormick.
“It appears that certain women may have been granted assurances that they will suffer no adverse consequences for speaking about their experiences with Bridgewater. Others have been explicitly threatened if they do speak out,” she said. “If McCormick can line up women to compliment his work as CEO in a campaign ad, then he must also demand that Bridgwater release sexual harassment survivors from their NDA’s so they can speak freely about their experiences as well.”
