A screenshot of a McCormick for Senate-paid sponsored Facebook post. (Source: Dave McCormick on Facebook)

David McCormick, one of the leading Republican candidates in Pennsylvania’s U.S. Senate race, has portrayed himself as a “lifelong PA hunter” throughout his campaign – but there are no records of the former hedge fund CEO ever holding a hunting license in Connecticut, where he lived for over a decade.

The Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection did not have any record of McCormick holding a hunting license in their system since 2008. McCormick lived in Conneticut until this year, when he moved back to Pennsylvania to run for Senate. 

Jess Szymanski, McCormick’s communications director, told Heartland Signal that McCormick has a hunting license in Pennsylvania. But before this year, McCormick hadn’t lived in the state since 2005, the Associated Press reported.

Pennsylvania Game Commission documents obtained by Heartland Signal also show that McCormick’s family farm — where he said during a Republican Senate primary debate he “spent the first 18 years of my life hunting, fishing, and playing sports” — was not part of the state’s Hunter Access Program. That means the public could not legally hunt there. 

This hasn’t stopped McCormick from portraying himself as a hunter and sportsman throughout his campaign. Many of McCormick’s ads feature him dressed in blaze orange hunting gear located somewhere in the woods, and he told the Ruthless podcast that he grew up “hunting the first Monday of deer season — we took off school; school was canceled.” 

McCormick’s ads have played up his hunting background to promote his pro-gun agenda, gaining an endorsement from Rep. Matt Dowling, Chairman of the Pennsylvania House’s Second Amendment caucus. McCormick tweeted on April 11: “I grew up hunting on my family farm in Bloomsburg and served on the frontlines of the U.S. military. While the extreme Left threatens our constitutional right to bear arms, I will defend Pennsylvanians’ 2A right.”

McCormick’s biggest rival in the Senate primary is the newly Trump-endorsed TV personality Dr. Mehmet Oz, whose stance on the Second Amendment has been questioned for seemingly shifting since his campaign began. 

A poll conducted in April by Monmouth University showed Oz having a slight lead to McCormick – 20% to 16% respectively – as being the stronger candidate to handle voters’s top concerns. Only 4% of Republicans surveyed said gun control and the Second Amendment were top issues for them. 

McCormick beats Oz when it came to favorability ratings. Voters were 51% favorable and 15% unfavorable toward McCormick compared with 48% favorable and 37% unfavorable for Oz, which according to Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute, shows how “even Trump’s endorsement has not brought clarity to the field.”

An InsiderAdvantage/FOX29 Philadelphia poll released Tuesday shows the race now being tight with three candidates instead of two. Along with Oz in first place (22.5%) and McCormick in third (18.5%), Kathy Barnette surged into second place (20.9%).

McCormick’s campaign told Axios that they’ve started airing a new TV ad called “Wrong Endorsement in Pennsylvania” as their main ad ahead of the primary on May 17.

EDITOR’S NOTE (8/14/23): A previous version of this story credited a story to WSEA when it should have been to the Associated Press.