Negative ad campaign targets Democrat running for state Supreme Court
With just days left before the Nov. 7 elections, the state Republican Party has launched a sharply negative ad campaign focused on the state Supreme Court bid of Allegheny County Judge Dwayne Woodruff.
To date, Republican and Democratic candidates running for a total of seven statewide judicial seats have run positive ads introducing themselves to voters. But in a new 30-second TV spot, Republicans assert that “Allegheny County investigated nepotism in the courts: Dwayne Woodruff was caught hiring his daughter. Woodruff had no comment. Earlier this year, Woodruff filed a false affidavit with the Department of State, attempting to mislead voters. Woodruff had no comment.”
The rest of the ad touts the Republican in the race, interim Justice Sallie Mundy.
Friday afternoon, the Woodruff campaign released a legal memo from attorney Scott Caulfield arguing that the ad’s latter accusation, concerning the campaign finance report, was “incontrovertibly inaccurate” and that “the entire ad should be removed immediately.”
“News stations who are currently and planning on airing ads [should] be advised,” the campaign said.
State GOP spokesman Greg Manz responded: “Dwayne Woodruff and his team of lawyers can play semantics all they want, but the fact remains that he
egregiously misled voters by playing fast and loose with campaign finance disclosures.”
The ad’s first claim stems from a 2012 story by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, which undertook the investigation, not the county itself. The newspaper found that Judge Woodruff was one of nearly a dozen county judges with a relative working in his chambers, where his daughter Jenyce was a law clerk. The practice was permitted at the time, despite raising questionsof nepotism.
Judge Woodruff spoke about the matter to the PostGazette during an unsuccessful 2015 Supreme Court run. Noting that Jenyce Woodruff was, like him, a graduate of Duquesne Law School, he said, “My daughter was qualified and I needed someone good right away.”
Jenyce Woodruff was no longer working for him, he said in 2015.
The ad’s “false affidavit” accusation appears to stem from a campaign finance report Judge Woodruff’s campaign filed early this year. The initial version of the filing, which covered financial activity from the start of the year through late March, identified over $300,000 in campaign contributions: An amended filing one month later showed that in fact, the campaign had raised less than $50,000 during the period, reporting much smaller donations from the candidate and the Steelersowning Rooney family.
Campaigns can file financial reports electronically, as the Woodruff campaign did. But they must separately provide a hard copy of a cover sheet, which includes a signed and notarized statement by the candidate and campaign officials attesting to the report’s accuracy.
In his memo, Mr. Caulfield argues that after the Woodruff campaign submitted the data electronically, it “discovered [the report] included unintentionally inaccurate information.” Judge Woodruff “did NOT complete the filing process by signing and executing the inaccurate ... report,” Mr. Caulfield wrote. The filing of an affidavit “never happened here,” until after the corrected version of the report was filed.
That narrative may gain some weight from the fact that, when the Post-Gazette requested a copy of the hard copy affidavit on Friday, the Department of State appeared to have only one version of the cover sheet on file. The sheet was notarized April 27 and corresponds with the amended version of the report.
Last month the Woodruff campaign told the Post-Gazette that the change resulted from “a simple clerical error” that it had since resolved. Subsequent reports have not raised red flags.
As noted in PoliticsPa, the online outlet that first reported the discrepancies, although campaigns sometimes file amended reports, changes of that magnitude are unusual. And although few voters may pay attention to such filings, the development did raise eyebrows among politicos, some of whom speculated the stumble hampered the campaign’s later fundraising efforts. Judge Woodruff has badly lagged Justice Mundy in fundraisingthis year.
It’s not clear how widely the ad is being aired, though FCC records suggest that state Republicans have bought just under $50,000 worth of airtime on KDKATV alone. The ad is set to run through Election Day.