The spot
A new spot from the state Senate campaign of Republican Jen Dintini, “Urgent Warning,” seeks to link Democratic rival Nick Pisciottano to liberal financier George Soros — the latest salvo in a campaign where each candidate has sought to tie the other to the views of their supporters.
When did it launch? Oct. 8
How many airings? At least 172 airings on broadcast TV in the Pittsburgh market, per ad-tracking firm AdImpact
How much? $239,307 as of Oct.16, according to an AdImpact estimate.
Who’s paying? Friends of Jen Dintini, the candidate’s campaign committee
The claims
“Urgent Warning” begins with a static-filled screen with the words “this is an urgent warning” superimposed on it. The ad calls Nick Pisciottano, a two-term state House member, a “radical” who is “funded by George Soros, attacking our DA and police, supporting open borders as fentanyl poisons our communities.” The phrasing makes it hard to determine whether the charges of “attacking our DA and police [and] supporting open borders” apply to Soros or Pisciottano, but the ad then offers Dintini as a “common-sense choice” for voters.
The ad cites “campaign finance reports, 2020-2024” as evidence of ties to Soros, a billionaire investor whose ample support of Democrats and criminal justice reform make him a bogeyman for the GOP. Its claims about open borders and law enforcement, illustrated with grainy footage of drug busts and rioting, are attributed to three news stories. One concerns a 2021 controversy involving Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr. Two 2023 stories relate to Soros contributions to other causes: a Chicago-based immigrant advocacy group, and the campaign of Matt Dugan, who challenged Zappala’s reelection last year.
The facts
The ad’s citation of years of campaign finance records hints that Pisciottano has lengthy, ongoing ties to Soros. Asked for details, the Dintini campaign pointed to three contributions – none from Soros directly – totaling $35,000 that Pisciottano reported within a two-month period in 2020.
The contributions were from the federal Future Now Fund, which has supported Democratic state legislative candidates nationwide. A Soros-backed committee, Democracy PAC, donated $500,000 to the group in the 2019-2020 election cycle. That’s about one-tenth of what Future Now received in contributions during that time; the donation to Pisciottano represents less than 1% of its spending during that period.
Republicans have made an issue of similar donations elsewhere, and Pisciottano said the spot was “boilerplate Republican fear-mongering talking points.”
Pisciottano said that he “unequivocally never received any money directly” from Soros. He added that Soros provided only a fraction of the Future Now funding and thus just pennies on each dollar that made it to Pisciottano’s own campaign account: “I’m not sure that receiving less than 3% of my support … four years ago really substantiates their claim, especially when some of the other claims are dubious.”
Two of the three news stories referenced in the ad don’t mention Pisciottano, and are about Soros alone.
Pisciottano did take one position ascribed to him: He joined with 10 other local Democrats — progressive and moderate — to sign a June 2021 letter criticizing District Attorney Stephen A, Zappala Jr. for instructing his office not to strike plea deals with clients of a defense attorney who criticized the justice system.
The letter called that an “unethical” decision to “put personal animus over professional duty,” and called on Zappala to drop the policy, apologize, and conduct an outside review of how the office handled cases involving outspoken attorneys.
Pisciottano told WESA he signed the letter because, “If a prosecutor acts on a personal grudge, then that attorney’s clients aren’t going to get justice.” But he noted that his supporters include unions that represent state troopers, police and corrections officers: “It’s very dishonest to say I am attacking police when I am endorsed by them.”
The Dintini campaign notes the Future Fund was the largest donor to Pisciottano’s $160,000 campaign in 2020. The ad’s goal, Dintini spokesperson Ben Wren said, is to “lay out the Soros agenda and ask … why a Soros group decided to back Pisciottano so heavily.” He said the absence of support since then reflected that Pisciottano had been elected to a safely Democratic seat: “Their mission was accomplished.”
“You learn a lot about a politician by the people who support him,” Wren added. “Soros’ early funding of Pisciottano is a red flag to voters that he’s not the moderate, Mon Valley Democrat he plays on TV.”
Notably, Pisciottano’s campaign has also used Dintini’s supporters against her, with a spot that began airing Sept. 24 and has received nearly $146,000 worth of airtime so far.
The ad, which features a woman picking up a prescription and then being put behind bars, asserts that Dintini “will vote to criminalize women's reproductive health care. Dintini’s extreme allies want to jail women and their doctors for birth control, in vitro fertilization and vital reproductive health care.”
The ad cites no sources for this claim, and Dintini has denied wanting to overturn abortion rights. In her response to a WESA Voter Guide survey on this question, for example, she said, “I support a woman’s right to safe medical procedures and her being able to make those decisions with her doctors. I support our current laws.”
Similarly, on a recent WTAE public-affairs program she said she had “always supported the law that we have in Pennsylvania regarding abortion. … We need to make sure that women have access to safe medical procedures.”
The Pisciottano campaign notes that at least as of early summer, Dintini’s campaign was supported almost entirely by state Senate Republican leadership, who’ve presided over an effort to amend the constitution in a way critics said would weaken legal protections for abortion.
Democrats grouse that Dintini frequently uses hedged language on the issue, often referring vaguely to “medical procedures.” Viola Garis, Pisciottano’s campaign manager, said abortion foes “wouldn’t support [Dintini] if they weren’t counting on her vote,” surmising that she would be “a loyal member of an extreme Republican caucus that is dedicating to taking away women’s rights.”
Wren said Pisciottano’s campaign “seems content with making up people’s position for his own political advancement. ... Jen has said she supports our current abortion laws. I don't know how clearer it can be.”
PublicSource’s access to AdImpact data on political advertising is made possible through a partnership with WESA and support from The Heinz Endowments.
