Before Dave McCormick stepped down as CEO of hedge fund giant Bridgewater Associates in 2022, his staff joked that he should become leader of the free world. The 59-year-old businessman is currently fighting to become Pennsylvania’s next senator.
He’s not the only Bridgewater graduate applying for a U.S. Senate job. The company’s former chief financial officer, Nera Domenici, is a Republican Senate candidate in New Mexico, giving the secretive financial company a big role in the 2024 election cycle. .
Although Bridgewater isn’t considered a final school for financiers-turned-politicians, the 1,300-employee company has quietly become a candidate training institute. However, the Bridgewater Brigade’s electoral record has so far been in the red. McCormick is trailing his opponent by about 1 point, while Domenici is trailing by 10 points, according to an average of polls conducted by RealClearPolling. McCormick previously lost in Pennsylvania’s 2022 Senate primary.
Former Bridgewater Associates CEO Dave McCormick is running for Pennsylvania’s Senate, but he’s not the only former hedge fund employee to turn to politics.
Although Mr. McCormick and Mr. Domenici are Republicans, Bridgewater officials are not known for favoring one political party over another. This summer, Ray Dalio (the company’s Bobby Axelrod) declined to endorse Donald Trump or Trump’s then-opponent Joe Biden (even after Biden resigned). Dalio has not publicly changed his mind.) “I don’t think the company itself has any political leanings,” said Daniel Saidi, a former Bridgewater investor.
One reason Bridgewater is a hotbed for aspiring politicians is its unique culture. Mr. Dalio has publicly preached the company’s values of “radical truth” and “radical transparency.” All employees in a company are evaluated on their performance by their colleagues. This is the same experience for civil servants.
“I think that living in a fishbowl of constant surveillance may prepare some people for politics,” said John Longo, a professor at Rutgers Business School.
Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates, says his 1,300-person company has quietly become something of a training ground for a new generation of ambitious politicians.
Unlike economics majors at other financial institutions, Bridgewater’s 20-somethings are often selected from philosophy or biology departments, Saidi said. That intellectual diversity, he says, contributed to CNBC’s cross-talk conversations.
But politics was not a natural destination. For years, Wall Streeters seeking office have been plagued by criticism that they are job destroyers and out of touch with working-class voters. Fears of these labels largely subsided in 2016, when Donald Trump won the presidency, giving hope among some of the 1 percent that the long-term attacks could be overcome.
“There are a lot of candidates who feel like President Trump has really opened doors that would have been difficult to open in the past,” said Republican strategist Lina Shah. “They frankly would have had to deal with the same set of attacks.” [Mitt] What Romney had to deal with was, “You’re too rich, you’re too out of line, you’re not someone I can trust.” ”
Mr. Romney spent most of his career working at the private equity firm Bain Capital, buying and selling companies for huge profits. Mr. Romney’s political opponents often used fired employees of Bain-backed companies to attack the former businessman. Bridgewater employees trade a variety of markets including goods, stocks, and currencies, making it difficult to visit the factory city devastated by the evil Bridgewater suit.
“There’s no human story like the one that the Ted Kennedy and Barack Obama campaigns used so effectively against Mitt Romney,” said political analyst Brian Goldsmith.
That’s not to say that opponents aren’t trying to malign Bridgewater. Opponents of Mr. McCormick and Mr. Domenici have accused the candidates of their former employers’ investments in China.
New Mexico’s incumbent Democratic senator, Martin Heinrich, ran an ad over the summer calling out the company’s ties to China. “Mr. Nera served as CFO of Bridgewater, a hedge fund that invested millions of dollars in a company that manufactured Chinese fighter jets,” the paper said.
Pennsylvania’s incumbent Democratic senator, Bob Casey, has launched a similar attack on McCormick. “While I was fighting for union rights and working families in Pennsylvania, he was making a lot of money investing in China,” Casey said on the campaign trail. “He not only invested in Chinese companies, but he also invested in companies that built the Chinese military.”
McCormick said Bridgewater has few assets invested in China and that clients expect hedge funds to invest in China.
Nella Domenici, former chief financial officer of Bridgestone, is a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in New Mexico.
The Bridgewater Brigade has also been accused of being carpetbaggers. Both candidates currently have residences in the states they seek to represent, but they spent years trekking from Pennsylvania and New Mexico to Bridgewater’s vast campus in Connecticut.
Domenici, the daughter of former six-term Sen. Pete Domenici, is looking to capitalize on the goodwill her family has built here over the years. McCormick grew up in Pennsylvania and recently purchased a home in Pittsburgh.
Bridgewater wouldn’t be the first Wall Street firm to trade executives for swamps. Over the past three decades, Goldman Sachs executives have joined presidential administrations and run for political office, leading some to refer to Goldman Sachs as “Government Sachs.”
Saidi added that McCormick and Domenici’s political leanings are “unique to them.” “But I wouldn’t be surprised if there were people in my class, or two or three years above me, or two or three years below me, who were retiring,” either running for Congress or joining the government. A raft to put it on. ”
Andrew Zucker works for a production company in New York City. His works are new york times, financial timesand airmail, Among other publications.
