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Here’s one thing both Pirates fans and politicos know: If you want to be competitive in October, you have to raise and spend money even before the season begins.
People who aren’t driven by soul-crushing pursuits pay little attention to major-league payrolls, still less to campaign finance reports. But financial matters can determine whether a campaign appears on TV … and sometimes whether it ends up in court.
In fact, state House Rep. Valerie Gaydos, a three-term incumbent representing the 44th district, is being sued in a small-claims case by a campaign vendor, Red Hyp LLC. The $12,000 suit — the maximum amount allowed to be heard by a local magistrate — was filed in mid-September and is scheduled for a hearing on Halloween. That’s less than a week before the election.
Gaydos and her campaign treasurer did not respond to calls, texts, or emails about the case. Red Hyp’s owner, Anissa Zappala would say little about it, other than the fact that Red Hyp had made "multiple attempts" to resolve a payment dispute, but that the campaign “hadn't shown much interest in resolving this.”
"If Valerie wants to campaign on her support of small businesses, she should start by paying her bills," she added.
Campaign finance records show the Gaydos campaign already paid over $39,000 to Red Hyp as of mid-May, for services described as “consulting” and “media/film.” By that point, Gaydos had raised a little more than $91,000 this year. That’s less than the $117,000 raised by her Democratic challenger Hadley Haas.
Suits like this aren’t unheard of, but they aren’t common either. As one veteran campaigner put it, “So much of this business is reputational, and so much of the work is based on networking” that a vendor has to think carefully about taking such a step. On the other hand, a politician might just write a check to prevent a gripe from reaching this stage. A lawsuit can, after all, mean having a court date in the last days of a hotly contested campaign.
It will be for Magistrate District Judge Matthew V. Rudzki to decide who’s right. But word of the suit has been making the rounds in political circles. And in a statement, the House Democratic Campaign Committee — which seeks to help Democrats like Haas — declared the case was “deeply concerning.”
“We know how hard campaign staffers and contractors work in the course of an election season,” it said in a statement.
Democrats have other reasons to smile about the financial picture in the 44th District, which includes Allegheny County airport-area suburbs and Ohio Valley towns. More recent campaign finance totals in the race won’t be released for more than a week. But AdImpact, which tracks current and future political advertising, estimates that Haas and her allies have plans to spend more than $1 million on ads, 30 times what the GOP has on deck.
That doesn’t account for investments by folks like CeaseFirePA, a gun-reform advocacy group that says it’s spending about $100,000 in mail, phone-banking, and fieldwork on Haas’ behalf.
This seat would be a nice get for Democrats, who hold the thinnest of majorities in the state House.
But I’ve learned not to underestimate Gaydos, who has bested challengers before. And voters in the 44th backed Donald Trump and Republican Congressional candidate Sean Parnell in 2020. The financial picture in other airport-area races, meanwhile, is more of a mixed bag.
In the 37th state Senate district — another battleground race that encompasses the smaller 44th House — AdImpact projects that incumbent Republican Devlin Robinson is on track to spend $3 million, compared to $2.5 million by Democrat Nicole Ruscitto.
By contrast, U.S. House Rep. Chris Deluzio appears in a strong position in the 17th Congressional District, which includes the airport area. Campaign finance reports show that from July through September, Deluzio raised nearly $1.5 million and had $1.65 million on hand going into October.
Republican rival Rob Mercuri, meanwhile, raised a bit more than $500,000, and had $635,000 to start October.
In fact, if dollars were votes, Pennsylvania Democrats would be measuring a number of offices for drapes.
In the state attorney general’s race, Democrat Eugene DePasquale outraised Republican Dave Sunday two-one from mid-May to mid-September: He garnered a bit less than $3.3 million dollars and had $2.1 million on hand; Sunday raised $1.4 million and had $1.2 million left.
More notably, in the auditor general race, Philadelphia state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta raised nearly half a million dollars in his bid to oust Republican incumbent Tim DeFoor, who raised just $68,000 in the period. And Kenyatta’s $416,000 bank account was nearly 18 times larger. Republican Treasurer Stacy Garrity, meanwhile, has raised nearly $490,000 to Democrat Erin McClelland’s roughly $92,000.
Of course, what candidates raise themselves is only part of the picture. Sunday has benefited from 7-digit spending by committees tied to hedge fund manager Jeff Yass, and in Pennsylvania's marquee U.S. Senate race, AdImpact suggests that 4 of the 5 top spenders in the race are outfits other than the campaigns of Democrat Bob Casey and Republican Dave McCormick. (When you boil it all down, AdImpact estimates that Team Red is slightly outspending the Democrats on ads, $169 million to $155.5 million.)
And then there are the interests who make all sides dumber. Take AmericaPAC, a Trump-friendly group bankrolled solely with $75 million from Twitter/X owner Elon Musk, and which devotes its time to stuff like a spurious claim that Pittsburgh’s immigration rate has been 2000% over the past couple years. (It’s been less than 1/100th of that, judging from Census estimates from 2021 and 2023.)
False political messaging has always been with us, and we track political spending partly to keep tabs on who shapes the public debate. But the rise of social media and big money mean it could cause harms whose cost can’t be calculated as easily as campaign contributions. And unlike a campaign vendor, voters can’t sue for damages.
