A ‘brazen’ Jeffrey Yass-backed mailer suggests the Pa. Supreme Court created the congressional map it actually threw out
“It’s probably the most shameless political ad I’ve ever seen,” said Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice David Wecht in a rare interview.
A GOP-affiliated PAC is sending Pennsylvania voters a mailer warning that members of the state Supreme Court “gerrymandered our congressional districts to help Democrats win.”
The postcard even provides a picture of a map with wildly shaped districts circled in red.
The issue? The pictured map was not drawn by Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court; it was drawn by legislative Republicans and thrown out by the justices as an unconstitutional gerrymander.
The misleading mailer even made its way to the home of one of three justices standing for retention in November. Justice David Wecht was astonished when he saw the postcard.
“That one goes beyond hyperbole or exaggeration into outright, brazen misrepresentation,” Wecht told The Inquirer on Friday. “It’s probably the most shameless political ad I’ve ever seen.”
Wecht and the other justices faced severe backlash in 2018 for the decision to throw out the GOP map — the one featured on the campaign mailers — with some Republicans later calling for Wecht’s impeachment from the court in part because of it.
The campaign literature, sent by the Commonwealth Leaders Fund, which has ties to Pennsylvania’s richest man, Jeffrey Yass, is one of several recent mailers and digital ads that sparked outrage among Democrats, who have decried deceptive tactics in the critically important judicial election. It follows a pattern of misinformation common in judicial contests.
Commonwealth Partners, the organization that runs the Commonwealth Leaders Fund, did not respond to a request for comment or questions about how widespread the mailer was.
» READ MORE: More than $7 million has poured into the Pa. Supreme Court judicial retention election so far
Yass frequently supports GOP causes. It was unclear Friday how much Yass and the PACs he support have contributed to the effort so far.
Three justices who were first elected as Democrats in 2015 — Christine Donohue, Kevin Dougherty, and Wecht — are asking voters this year to retain them for another decade-long term. (Supreme Court terms are 10 years, but Donohue would leave the bench in 2027 when she turns 75, the state’s mandatory retirement age for justices.)
Usually a quiet, off-year affair, the retention race has drawn millions in campaign spending and intense state and national focus on both sides of the aisle.
Republicans, driven by anger over the court’s decisions on election law, redistricting, and COVID shutdowns, view ousting the justices as an opportunity to reshape the 5-2 liberal court in a critical swing state. Democrats, meanwhile, are eager to retain justices who have been open to arguments that the state’s constitution holds civil rights protections broader than those in federal law. The court is likely to hear cases covering key issues, including voting and abortion rights, over the next decade.
Though the three justices were elected as Democrats 10 years ago, they stand for retention in a nonpartisan race that asks voters to simply mark “yes” or “no.”
‘Easier to get away with misinformation’
These races are particularly ripe for misinformation, said Douglas Keith, founding editor of State Court Report at the Brennan Center for Justice. It is most common, Keith said, for campaigners to produce ad campaigns that dig into justices’ prior cases to argue the justices are “soft on crime.”
State Supreme Court races have drawn increasing attention in recent years in response to the role state courts play in abortion rights and voting matters. But voters still tend not to know a lot about the justices on the state’s highest court, Keith said.
“There’s very little information that voters have going into these elections, so there’s going to be limited pushback on the messaging they are getting,” Keith said. “Perhaps it’s easier to get away with misinformation.”
» READ MORE: The future of redistricting in Pa. could be at stake in November’s Supreme Court race
Typically, Keith said, the bulk of the spending in Supreme Court races doesn’t come until the end of the cycle, meaning what voters have seen so far may be only the tip of the iceberg. Campaign finance filings made public last week reported spending from Jan. 1 through Sept. 15.
Similar strategies appeared in Wisconsin in the spring, when billionaire Elon Musk’s PAC funded advertisements that described the Democrat running for the state Supreme Court there as a “progressive champion” in an effort to make her appear further to the left than she was. And in Kansas in 2022, a Republican strategist sent misleading mailers that inaccurately told voters that to protect abortion rights, they must reject justices who had upheld state-level abortion rights.
Multiple mailers, multiple messages
The Pennsylvania gerrymandering postcard is one of several mailers and digital advertisements from anti-retention PACs that appear to offer confusing or misleading messaging to voters.
A digital ad from the Citizens for Term Limits PAC urges voting against retaining the justices to “protect women’s rights,” while others from the Commonwealth Partners urge a “no” vote to “protect democracy.” The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has overturned state laws that blocked Medicaid from paying for abortions and upheld the state’s mail voting law.
Those mailers, which use language that tends to appeal to Democrats rather than Republicans, argue that voting “no” term-limits the court and will defend democracy, protect women and children, and force a fair election. They lack specific context about cases, and they imply that rejecting the justices would create term limits even when it would not.
Wecht said he received several of the mailers calling for term limits. He argued that Pennsylvania already limits judges’ terms by forcing them to run for retention rather than offering lifetime appointments.
The mailers and ads came from Citizens for Term Limits, Commonwealth Partners, and Commonwealth Leaders Fund, all of which have ties to Yass.
The Pennsylvania Democratic Party equated Yass’ involvement here with Elon Musk’s historic investments in the Wisconsin Supreme Court election earlier this year. Despite Musk’s deep-pocketed contributions, Democrats won that race.
“Much like we saw in Wisconsin, MAGA billionaires are lying and trying to buy this election so they can install a Pennsylvania Supreme Court that will put the needs of the wealthy ahead of the rest of us,” Eugene DePasquale, the chair of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party, said in a statement.