Pa.’s richest person is pumping millions of dollars into the race for attorney general

Thanks in large part to Pennsylvania’s richest person, TV ad spending for the Republican candidate for state attorney general is flooding the race.

The wave of spending for Dave Sunday has sparked allegations from his Democratic opponent, Eugene DePasquale, that the Republican is trying to shield those dollars from public view to avoid association with the donor, billionaire Wall Street trader Jeff Yass.

The Sunday campaign, however, says it’s just following the rules as usual.

Commonwealth Leaders Fund, a political action committee funded almost exclusively by Yass, booked more than $5.4 million in TV ads supporting Sunday from June through the Nov. 5 election.

It’s not the only big spender. Keystone Prosperity PAC, which is funded by the Republican Attorneys General Association, also spent nearly $5.4 million on ads for Sunday that will begin running in October, for a total of about $10.8 million in pro-Sunday ads from outside supporters. Sunday’s campaign directly funded another $1 million in ads.

Sunday, the York County district attorney, has centered his campaign on public safety, saying he aims to crack down on illegal gun possession and fentanyl sales. DePasquale, the former state auditor general, has pledged to protect the right to abortion and focus on prosecuting hate crimes.

Serving as Pennsylvania’s attorney general brings a lot of visibility, and previous officeholders have used that prominence to aim higher. For instance Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, was attorney general.

The ad spending from the Yass-funded PAC is not reflected on Sunday’s latest campaign finance filings. DePasquale campaign manager Carver Murphy said that discrepancy shows Sunday is trying to “pick and choose which laws he follows and which he blatantly ignores.”

Commonwealth Leaders Fund’s ads are coordinated with Sunday’s campaign, as opposed to being independent expenditures (political spending that aims to influence a race, but is made without consultation with a campaign).

This is made clear in the ads, which include a note that says “Paid for by Commonwealth Leaders Fund and authorized by Dave Sunday.” Ads that are produced in coordination with a campaign but are funded by an outside group get reported on candidates’ campaign finance reports as in-kind contributions.

Sunday’s campaign said DePasquale is trying to make a mountain out of a molehill. Spokesperson Ben Wren told Spotlight PA that while the campaign approved the ads and knew about the spending, Commonwealth Leaders Fund didn’t notify them about the final spend number until after they had filed their finance report.

“The onus is on the organization making the contribution to notify the campaign of the contribution,” Wren said. “Eugene DePasquale is a career politician and knows the campaign finance process. If he had a prosecutorial record to run on, he wouldn’t have to make up these issues.”

But DePasquale’s campaign maintains that the scale of the spending and the length of time the ads have been running make the lack of a report from Sunday’s campaign questionable.

“There is no universe where Dave Sunday’s campaign didn’t know the value of these contributions,” Murphy told Spotlight PA. “They were part of the transaction and certainly have records of it. Ad disclosures make that information public. They weren’t waiting on notification of the contribution from [Commonwealth Leaders Fund], they were trying to hide it.”

“Thankfully, voters have another, better choice,” Murphy said. “Eugene DePasquale doesn’t work for Jeffrey Yass, and he’s not beholden to any one billionaire donor.”

Wren noted, the ads from Keystone Prosperity PAC did not run in coordination with the campaign, and so will be reported as independent expenditures, not in-kind contributions.

Yass co-founded high-speed trading firm Susquehanna International Group, which is estimated to be worth nearly $50 billion. He keeps a low profile and did not return a request for comment about his support for Sunday, but has made himself omnipresent in Pennsylvania through enormous donations.

He commits much of his political spending to candidates who support school choice. But Wren said that’s not a factor in this race.

“Dave doesn’t have a position on school choice,” Wren said, calling it a legislative issue. He added that Sunday “has given the same presentation to every group about his record as a prosecutor and his goal to bring accountability and redemption to the criminal justice system.”

Yass’ donations flow to candidates through a network of PACs, the most active of which are managed by the conservative nonprofit Commonwealth Partners.

A separate Yass-funded PAC, Commonwealth Children’s Choice Fund, also gave Sunday a $550,000 donation directly. That money was reported in his campaign finance filing.

Keystone PAC, which is funded by the Republican Attorneys General Association of PA — and is separate from Keystone Prosperity PAC despite being affiliated with the same group — also gave him $550,000.

Yass and the Republican Attorneys General Associations aren’t the only ones actively spending in the race. Sunday also received $10,000 from Koch PAC, which is backed by the influential Republican Koch family; $20,000 from the PA Future Fund, a PAC run by perennial Republican power player and chocolate company owner Bob Asher; and $20,000 from the relatively new Republicans United, a PAC that is giving to GOP candidates statewide this cycle.

TV ad spending on Sunday dwarfs that of DePasquale. The Democrat is funding TV ads through his campaign account and has pledged a little less than $3 million from June to November.

DePasquale is accepting more donations through his campaign committee than Sunday, and has raised nearly $3.3 million since this campaign finance reporting cycle began in May, just after the primary election. Sunday raised nearly $1.4 million in the same period.

The biggest donor to DePasquale’s campaign is the national Democratic Attorneys General Association. Also known as DAGA, the group has given DePasquale more than $1.5 million since May. That number includes campaign checks as well as funding for polling and opposition research.

Outside of national dollars, DePasquale leaned on traditional state Democratic funding sources, including organized labor and trial lawyers.

Contributions from unions account for around $700,000. Attorneys — either through individual checks, their firms, or PACs associated with their trade groups — gave DePasquale more than $300,000.

The rest of DePasquale’s cash came from an assortment of other individual donors or interest groups. Among the most notable checks were a $50,000 one from Thomas Hagen, the billionaire chair of Erie Insurance; $25,000 from New York City grocery magnate and occasional GOP mayoral candidate John Catsimatidis; and $8,000 from Jonathan and Jennifer Allan Soros.

Spotlight PA’s Stephen Caruso contributed reporting for this story.

90.5 WESA partners with Spotlight PA, a collaborative, reader-funded newsroom producing accountability journalism for all of Pennsylvania. More at spotlightpa.org.