PITTSBURGH — Veteran Army Ranger Sean Parnell has been tapped by Pennsylvania Sen.-elect David McCormick to run Pennsylvania Rising, a 501(c)(4) organization designed to continue the job Parnell did this past cycle with a group called Keystone Rising, registering new voters and building a permanent bank of Republican mail-in voters in the state.
“We built an absentee ballot and early vote program as well as focused on new voter registration,” Parnell said of his earlier efforts. “It was so wildly successful and outcome-determinative, McCormick felt they needed to keep doing it.”
Last spring, Parnell was a senior adviser to Keystone Renewal, a super PAC that supported McCormick’s successful victory over incumbent Democrat Bob Casey Jr. His mission was to tap into non-traditional voters as well as regular Republican voters and get them to vote by mail. Parnell said it was a huge success.
“McCormick won 27 counties in votes cast by mail,” he said. “For comparison sake, when Dr. [Mehmet] Oz ran in 2022 for the Senate, he won only two. In those 27 counties, [McCormick’s] margin of victory was 21,000 votes, which was greater than his statewide margin of victory.”
In short, that statistic alone for McCormick really made the difference.
McCormick wasn’t the only one who benefited. President-elect Donald Trump came up big, too.
“Because of our program, “Trump improved his margin in 55 of 67 counties with mail-in ballots,” Parnell said.
The effort was a major turnaround in Republicans’ vote-by-mail operation as well as unprecedented. Keystone Renewal worked shoulder-to-shoulder with the Republican State Leadership Committee PAC and the Sentinel Action Fund to register new Republicans and build a statewide mail-in-ballot initiative.
While the Democrats were bragging about door-knocking, this new effort not only registered new voters but also made sure they voted.
Heading into this year, Republicans in this state were in a deficit compared to the powerhouse of mail-in ballot operations that the Democrats had built. In the 2020 presidential race, more than 35,000 “4-of-4” Republican voters (loyal voters who have voted in four out of the last four elections) skipped the general election. In 2022, that number of vote-skippers rose to over 61,000. Even worse, of the 3-of-4 participants (who voted in three of the last four elections), the number rose from more than 70,000 in 2020 to just shy of 174,000 in 2022.
In short, more than 100,000 high-propensity voters skipped the presidential election in 2020. In 2022, more than 230,000 high-propensity voters skipped the midterm elections.
In other words, if the over 100,000 high-propensity voters who skipped the 2020 presidential election actually had cast ballots, the outcome may have been different, as then-President Donald Trump lost Pennsylvania that year by about 80,000 votes.
This past November, Trump defeated Kamala Harris by over 170,000 votes, with McCormick defeating Casey by approximately 15,000 votes. Parnell said those numbers in future elections should continue to grow for Republicans as long as they don’t take their foot off of the gas pedal with professional efforts such as Pennsylvania Rising.
Parnell said one of the biggest impacts of their efforts was the ads cut by Donald Trump Jr.
“Don was involved from the very beginning,” Parnell said. “I told him what the plan was, and he said, ‘Let me know how I can help.’ Then, he did so by filing three digital ads for us that were by far our most successful in terms of reach.
He added, “Don Jr. is just a powerhouse and has really become a leader in this movement. And without him, this program would not have been as successful as it was in Pennsylvania. It’s just that simple.”
Trump Jr. returned the compliment, saying he shares McCormick’s vision to grow the Pennsylvania voter base and he cannot imagine anyone else better equipped to lead that effort.
“Sean Parnell is a combat veteran and a great patriot,” said Trump Jr., adding, “President Trump and Dave McCormick were the tip of the spear in Pennsylvania. I am very excited to see Pennsylvania Rising’s dedication to continuing to support the America First Movement in the Keystone State.”
Parnell said the effort will also serve as a bridge builder for McCormick and other Republican elected officials in Pennsylvania, from the state legislature and congressional delegation to the statewide elected row offices.
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“It will help McCormick be an effective leader in the U.S. Senate, but also in the commonwealth,” he said. “It gives him even more of an opportunity to work hand-in-glove with our state legislators, and this organization is going to be the first step in doing all of that.”
There are also the Pennsylvania State Supreme Court races in the state next year, where three of the five seats in the Democratic majority on the state court are up for reelection. That race will be followed by a governor’s race in 2026.