Senate Republican candidates over the last few election cycles have been outraised by their Democratic opponents, so this cycle, the National Republican Senatorial Committee has prioritized recruiting wealthy candidates that can self-fund their campaigns.
In Montana, Republicans have recruited retired Navy SEAL Tim Sheehy, the CEO of Bridger Aerospace, an aerial firefighting company worth around $300 million. In West Virginia, they are backing Gov. Jim Justice, the wealthiest man in the state who oversees a coal and hospitality empire. And in Pennsylvania, the NRSC is attempting to lure former Bridgewater Associates CEO David McCormick back for another campaign — he narrowly lost the 2022 GOP primary.
All three men are rich and theoretically could self-fund their campaigns. While their ability to cut large checks for their campaigns could help close the gap with Democratic candidates, their sprawling finances, business dealings, and in some cases unpaid tax bills could provide fodder for their Democratic opponents.
In March, NRSC Chairman Steve Daines told Politico that it was “helpful” to recruit candidates with deep pockets, because of the fundraising deficit GOP Senate nominees have found themselves in during recent election cycles.
Democrats have had self-funders in previous cycles. Last year, beer heiress Trudy Busch Valentine poured $15 million of her own fortune into a losing Missouri Senate bid, and former Milwaukee Bucks executive Alex Lasry spent $14 million before dropping out of the Wisconsin Senate primary. This year, Democratic Rep. David Trone is sent to spend upwards of $50 million of his own cash as he looks to replace the retiring Sen. Ben Cardin.
But with Republicans making inroads with working-class voters over the past few election cycles, Democrats believe they can successfully paint the GOP’s crop of Senate candidates as elites who are out of touch with the ordinary American.
"Republicans are recruiting candidates with massive baggage and disqualifying vulnerabilities," said DSCC spokesperson Tommy Garcia. He argued that their liabilities will bring about "vicious primaries" that will lead to Democrats keeping hold of the Senate.
Swiss Bank Accounts
McCormick, who has yet to announce whether or not he will run for Senate again, has said he is “seriously considering” another bid, and an announcement could come in the fall. He is the top choice for Senate Republicans looking to oust Democratic Sen. Bob Casey, and he has effectively frozen the field of potential candidates — no major candidate has filed to run yet.
He previously served as undersecretary of the Treasury, joined Bridgewater Associates in 2009, and eventually became CEO in 2017.
His financial disclosure from the 2022 primary revealed that he earned $22.5 million in salary and owned multiple properties in Manhattan, Dallas, Colorado, and Pittsburgh, along with his family’s ranch in Pennsylvania that he highlighted throughout his campaign. He and his wife, Dina Powell McCormick, owned assets with a total value between $116 and $290 million.
Divorce records obtained by The Messenger from McCormick’s 2015 divorce from Amy Richardson, which showed the division of assets, revealed that he and his ex-wife held $39 million worth of assets, including six Credit Suisse bank accounts worth $4.3 million. The Swiss bank is famous for its banker-client confidentiality.
The documents obtained were prepared on December 23, 2014. The couple finalized their divorce the next year. Last year, Insider reported that McCormick agreement to pay his ex-wife $1 million if he left his hedge fund job to work in the public sector.
That was the same year the Senate released an extensive investigation that found Credit Suisse helped their American clients evade taxes. There is no indication that McCormick nor his ex-wife did anything illegal, and it is not uncommon for American citizens to have foreign bank accounts to help reduce their tax burden. Typically, they have to report the bank accounts to the IRS in order to pay the proper amount of taxes. There is no evidence that Credit Suisse helped McCormick in particular evade taxes.
A McCormick aide did not respond to requests for comment for this article.
McCormick isn’t the only politician that has had Swiss bank accounts. In 2012, then-presidential candidate Mitt Romney was revealed to have a Swiss bank account in another bank, UBS. The Romney campaign at the time said he paid the appropriate taxes.
The two-year investigation of the Swiss bank culminated in a 176-page report that charges that from at least 2001 to 2008, Credit Suisse helped its American customers evade taxes in many ways, including opening accounts in the name of shell companies as well as sending Swiss bankers to the United States to secretly recruit clients and service banks.
The report found that Credit Suisse exercised weak oversight of its policies for its U.S.-linked accounts. In 2002, the bank started a policy that called for its U.S. accounts to be opened by a single Swiss office, SALN, and their bankers were given special training in U.S. regulatory and tax requirements
On May 19, 2014, the Department of Justice announced that Credit Suisse pleaded guilty “to conspiracy to aid and assists U.S. taxpayers in filing false income tax returns and other documents with the IRS.”
“The plea agreement, along with agreements made with state and federal partners, provides that Credit Suisse will pay a total of $2.6 billion - $1.8 billion to the Department of Justice for the U.S. Treasury, $100 million to the Federal Reserve, and $715 million to the New York State Department of Financial Services,” the release reads.
A leak of data from Credit Suisse in 2022 on more than 18,000 bank accounts ranging from the 1940s into the 2010s, but not the bank's current operations. The leak exposed how the bank held hundreds of millions of dollars for heads of state, sanctioned businessmen, and controversial figures across the globe.
Those who held Credit Suisse accounts included those involved in a “wide-ranging conspiracy” surrounding Venezuela’s oil company, an Algerian defense minister involved in human rights abuses, and Middle-eastern spy chiefs. Credit Suisse was also accused of laundering money for Bulgarian cocaine traffickers.
McCormick, who lost to celebrity Dr. Mehmet Oz by less than 1,000 votes in the GOP primary last year, was relentlessly attacked over Bridgewater’s investments in China and has recently come under scrutiny for his financial ties to Saudi Arabia.
Bridger Aerospace
Sheehy is waging his campaign based on his experience as a Navy SEAL and the company he founded, Bridger Aerospace, an aerial firefighting company.
“Sheehy has created hundreds of Montana jobs and over one billion in enterprise value in the rural Montana economy. He has a proven understanding of job creation, enterprise growth, and the importance of a business-friendly environment,” reads the “Meet Tim” section of his campaign’s website.
The company, based in Belgrade, Montana, was founded in 2014 “to support front-line firefighters with world-leading technology and aerial fire suppression systems.”
Sheehy brought the company public in 2023, merging with Jack Creek Investment Corp., a “blank check company” incorporated in the Cayman Islands. The deal valued Bridger at $869 million.
“Jack Creek Investment Corp. is a blank check company incorporated as a Cayman Islands exempted company for the purpose of effecting a merger, share exchange, asset acquisition, share purchase, reorganization or similar business combination with one or more businesses or entities,” their website reads. The Caymans also are a tax haven for wealthy individuals, and companies are typically incorporated there to avoid paying income, capital gains, or corporate taxes.
Better known as “SPACs,” or “special purpose acquisition companies,” they are subjected to less regulation that IPOs, which until recently have been the main vehicle for taking a company public.
“The closing of the transaction and our listing on Nasdaq is an important milestone and an incredibly proud moment for the entire Bridger team,” Sheehy said when the merger went public.
SPACs have been around for a while, but in recent years they have grown in popularity as a way to bring a company onto the public market. According to a 2021 article in the Harvard Business Review, in 2020, “SPACs accounted for more than 50% of new publicly listed U.S. companies.” In the first quarter of 2021, 295 SPACs were created with $96 billion invested.
Bridger Aerospace is incorporated in Delaware, like many other companies in the country. Corporations registered in Delaware can have their headquarters elsewhere in the U.S. and are exempt from state corporate income tax, and are drawn to the state due to their corporate secrecy laws. Montana has a 6.75% corporate income tax rate. Tax avoidance is not an illegal practice, and many companies aim to pay as little tax as possible.
The Sheehy campaign did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Justice’s History of Late Payments
Justice, the richest man in West Virginia, has a sprawling portfolio of coal and mining companies. He also owns the Greenbriar, a famous luxury resort in the state.
In March, the Wall Street Journal reported that Justice had put his coal businesses up for sale and that Justice’s empire had fallen on hard times as he was “personally on the hook for nearly $700 million in loans his coal companies took out from now-defunct Greensill Capital.”
New reporting from the Parkersburg News and Sentinel found that a company owned by Justice and managed by his family has more than $124,000 in tax liens from the state tax division.
Frontier Coal Company, owned by the Justice family in Wyoming County, owes more than $124,000 in “accrued coal reclamation tax payments” from March 31 of this year dating back to January 2021. A Justice attorney, responding to the reporting, claimed that “Frontier has an amended tax return pending with the state that will resolve this issue.”
An editorial in the Charleston Gazette-Mail published on December 21, 2022, said that Justice “is notorious for dodging fines, taxes, court settlements, fees and vendor costs associated with his businesses.”
A story published in the West Virginia record in 2021 noted that Justice and his family owed nearly $100,000 in 2020 property taxes in McDowell County, mostly for real estate, vehicles, and business machinery.
In May, the Club for Growth, who supports Justice’s primary rival, Rep. Alex Mooney, launched an ad calling Justice a “deadbeat billionaire” who is an “embarrassment” to West Virginia.
“Do we truly want someone who doesn’t pay his bills and accrues fines left and right to represent our great state,” Mooney posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, on July 26. “Absolutely, not! West Virginians deserve better than this.”
The Justice campaign did not return requests for comment.