Until recently, McCormick was CEO of Bridgewater Associates, a hedge fund whose fieldstone-and-glass headquarters are on a wooded, 22-acre campus in Westport, Conn. It’s a world away from Pennsylvania cities like Scranton, McKeesport and Aliquippa, which have been hit hard by the kinds of shifts in global trade that Bridgewater’s traders and analysts seek to monetize each day.

McCormick is married to Dina Powell, a former Trump administration official who is now at Goldman Sachs. The couple has been warning their friends that McCormick plans to play up Trump-like views on the campaign trail — what they described as simply the cost of running in a Republican primary right now, according to two business associates of his from Wall Street who asked not to be named discussing private conversations.

So far, McCormick has work to do, according to longtime Trump associates.

“He doesn’t have the look,” said Sam Nunberg, a former political adviser to Trump. “He doesn’t have the talk down yet.”