13 things about Bob Casey Jr
1. Bob Casey Jr. was born and raised in Scranton and is the eldest son in an Irish-Catholic family of four boys and four girls: Patrick Casey, Margi Casey McGrath, Mary Ellen Casey Philbin, Kate Casey Brier, Christopher Casey, Erin Casey Walsh, and Matthew Casey.
2. He was born into a family with a long political history in Pennsylvania. His late father, Robert P. Casey, served Pennsylvanians as a state senator, an auditor general, and a two-term governor. His brother Pat has been a candidate for Congress in northeastern Pennsylvania, and political ambition runs in the family.
3. Casey attended Roman Catholic schools from elementary school to law school–Scranton Preparatory School, the College of the Holy Cross, and the Catholic University of America Columbus School of Law.
4. Between college and law school, Casey served as a member of the Jesuit Volunteer Corps and spent a year teaching and coaching basketball at an inner-city school in Philadelphia.
5. Casey has served as a two-term state auditor (the commonwealth's independently elected fiscal watchdog) and is currently the state treasurer. He launched his bid for U.S. senator at the bidding of Democratic Sens. Chuck Schumer of New York and Harry Reid of Nevada.
6. During Casey's two terms as auditor general, his office exposed holes in the state Health Department's oversight of nursing homes, particularly when it came to investigating life-threatening complaints. The auditor general's office also found wasteful spending by several cabinet-level agencies, including Pennsylvania's Department of Transportation (PennDOT), which had used $600,000 to recognize employee performance with embroidered clothing, tote bags, and toy rubber ducks with a PennDOT logo. In a performance audit of the state Board of Probation and Parole, Casey's staff found the agency had lost track of 1,560 probationers and parolees in Pennsylvania for two years. Another report showed that almost 2,000 firms either owing taxes or possessing other liabilities to the state nevertheless reaped $3 billion in government contracts.
7. Casey says he cannot separate his personal and religious beliefs from his political position. "I don't think you can speak to a public-policy issue and just say that it's just a personal point of view and pretend that it doesn't affect your position," he has noted.
8. Like his father, who attended Holy Cross on a basketball scholarship, Casey played ball in college. He was tempted to attend Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster; he had unrealistic hopes of playing Division III basketball. As a result of a basketball injury, Casey suffered a fractured nose and a ruptured Achilles tendon.
9. Casey has said that he and incumbent Sen. Rick Santorum agree only on "abortion and gun control" and that they part ways over everything else.
10. Casey's losing 2002 bid against Ed Rendell for Pennsylvania governor was more expensive than any other governor's primary race in state history; during the last 10 weeks of the hotly contested campaign, the Casey and Rendell camps aired a barrage of 30,000 TV ads.
11. During the 2002 campaign, Casey adapted a quote from former Vice President Hubert Humphrey as one of the campaign's signature lines: "The moral test of a government is how it treats those in the dawn of life, those in the shadows of life, and those in the twilight of life."
12. Married in 1985, Casey and his wife, Terese, are parents to four daughters: Elyse, Caroline, Julia, and Marena.
13. Casey is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Beacon Award from the Pennsylvania Child Care Association and the Spirit of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Legacy Award from the Interdenominational Ministers Conference.