With less than two weeks to go before voters choose the next Allegheny County executive, Democrats are renewing their efforts to tie Republican Joe Rockey to the broader conservative movement.
At a press conference Thursday, Democratic nominee Sara Innamorato and members of the state House and Senate said that while Rockey has portrayed himself as a moderate, his bid for office has been boosted by groups backed by conservative hedge fund manager Jeff Yass.
Yass is a long-time supporter of conservative causes that include the Commonwealth Leaders Fund political committee. The fund has in turn supported Save Allegheny County Action, an independent-expenditure group which spent more than $230,000 on TV spots backing Rockey between Sept. 19 and Oct. 23, campaign finance records show.
“As much as some people may say that there isn't an extremist agenda behind the Republican candidate, the reality is the money that is funding the Republican candidate is from those extreme sources,” said Rep. Dan Miller, a Democrat in the state House.
Groups connected to Yass have supported candidates and causes on the far-right, including charter schools and abortion bans.
“Republicans are hard at work to dismantle the progress that we've made because they only serve rich and powerful donors,” Innamorato said. “[Yass] has spent millions of dollars supporting Republican election deniers and anti-abortion extremists. It's the same reason why he's supporting Republican Joe Rockey.”
Dennis Roddy, a spokesperson for the Rockey campaign said Rockey’s agenda is “not anything politically extreme.” And he countered that the Rockey campaign, by law, is barred from directly coordinating with independent-expenditure groups.
“We have no knowledge as to where they get their funds. We see their commercials at the same time the rest of you do,” Roddy said.
Roddy noted that Innamorato’s campaign has also received support from outside spending groups: In the primary, Innamorato received copious support on TV from the Working Families Party. The group has been less active this fall, but has told WESA that it will be sending out mailers in the final days of the race. Rockey and his allies have also pilloried Innamorato for her prior membership in the Democrat Socialists of America, a group Innamorato has said she left in 2019.
A full picture of campaign-related spending will likely not emerge until after pre-election campaign finance reports are filed on Friday. But in recent days Innamorato’s campaign has stepped up efforts to link Rockey to the broader conservative movement on issues like abortion and election integrity. In a county where Democrats outnumber Republican voters by two-to-one, Rockey has sought to make in-roads with voters across the partisan divide.
Roddy accused the Innamorato campaign of trying to make an issue of Yass’ money “because she's reading the polls and she sees that she is sliding and sliding fast. And so they're reaching out for any kind of mud they can throw.”
The election is Nov. 7.
