Senate race heats up at co-gen plant as Republican challenger visits area
KAYLEE LINDENMUTH / SHENANDOAH SENTINEL - Republican candidate for U.S. Senate Dave McCormick campaigns at the John B. Rich Memorial Power Station in West Mahanoy Township on Sept. 30, 2024.
MOREA – The eyes of the nation are on the race for Pennsylvania’s seat in the U.S. Senate, and one of the candidates campaigned in northern Schuylkill County this week.
Dave McCormick, the Republican challenger against incumbent Democratic U.S. Senator Bob Casey, held a press conference at the John B. Rich Memorial Power Station cogeneration plant in West Mahanoy Township Monday.
The campaign stop was part of what he and his campaign billed the “Price of Poor Leadership” tour, which largely focused on the economy and energy, particularly how both have been harmed by Vice President Kamala Harris and by Casey.
It was McCormick’s second visit in the past year to a property owned by the coal baron Rich family, the first being a visit to the Reading Anthracite Company’s mines last November.
McCormick is seeking the Senate seat for the second time, following an unsuccessful bid for the Republican nomination in 2022, losing to Mehmet Oz both statewide and in Schuylkill County.
“Pennsylvania families, small businesses, seniors, farmers are all suffering from this economy,” McCormick said, calling the leadership in Washington “weak” and calling their policies “liberal” and “extreme.”
“The most notable is spending,” he told a group of workers from the co-generation plant. “Five trillion dollars of new spending. The spending has been crazy and that’s what’s pushed up the inflation and the incredible prices of groceries and everything in our economy.”
As the northern Schuylkill area has seen the most federal investment since the New Deal in recent years, McCormick was prompted to clarify what spending he considered wasteful.
“All the federal spending has created taxed. You’re all being taxed. It’s called inflation,” McCormick said. “When you spend too much, it’s not free.”
He said a “huge amount” of the funding has been used for electric vehicles as he said the current presidential administration plans to force Pennsylvanians to adopt such vehicles and move away from fossil fuels.
“We need to stop that,” McCormick said. “I’m for all forms of energy. We just can’t subsidize it.”
“True infrastructure, not political projects,” McCormick said, is what the government should be spending money on. “Roads, bridges, broadband, that’s true infrastructure. That’s the kind of money I would be supporting in federal government. I want to be sure Pennsylvania has a world-class infrastructure.”
Regarding energy, McCormick called out the Clean Power Plan, which he said would “put plants like this one in jeopardy.”
McCormick was joined by Will Rich, vice president of business development for Reading Anthracite Company and Alex Brush, general manager for the Rich Family of Companies John B. Rich Memorial Power Station and Schuylkill Energy Resources plant near Yatesville.
Rich is a fourth generation member of the family behind the Rich Family of Companies.
“Today, we find ourselves at a political crossroads where the livelihoods of this region are often caught in the crosshairs,” Rich said. “The mining and energy sectors are often painted in a negative light, but what many people fail to understand is what our current political officials are fighting against is precisely what the claim to want.”
Rich said that the “cleaner energy” wanted is what plants like his are providing. The two co-generation plants reclaim waste coal banks, like one just south of the Columbia Hose Co. affectionately known by locals as the AC/DC.
“Pennsylvania is the key to America’s carbon future,” Rich said. “The anthracite reserve beneath our feet is the only anthracite deposit in the United States and one of the largest reserves in the whole world.”
Brush said that the two plants he manages “maintain a near flawless environmental record” and spoke to the reclamation the plants have spurred.
“Between them, over their lifetimes, our two plants have remediated in excess of 65 Million tons of abandoned waste coal,” Brush said, saying that they have reclaimed hundreds of acres of abandoned mine land. He said that the “Green New Deal” policies threaten such work.
The reclamation undertaken by the power plants is among the only abandoned mine reclamation done in the mine-scarred Shenandoah and Mahanoy valleys.
Asked about why a visit to northern Schuylkill County, McCormick said “The way I think you run is the way you’re going to be as a Senator, so I’m everywhere.”
He said he’d been to Schuylkill County “many times.”
The race for the Senate seat is one of the most closely watched nationally and Casey has also made stops in the region, touting achievements at the Frackville/Saint Clair Grade project and the Schuylkill County Fire Training Center.
The two will debate on broadcast television statewide Thursday at the WHTM-TV studios in Dauphin County. Locally, the debate will air on WBRE-TV Channel 28.
The Shenandoah Sentinel was the ONLY Schuylkill County-based news source at this event. If you find value in our reporting and in knowing what YOUR local elected leaders are doing, PLEASE consider contributing to our efforts via Patreon or Buy Me A Coffee.
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