Smear casts a shadow on 12th Congressional District race
In the rough and tumble of a tough political season, idiocy and mendacity usually win. Television ads and mailers chock-full of lies and out-of-context quotes are indicators of just how much contempt any given campaign has for the intelligence of the voters they’re courting.
If the commercials and mailers currently aimed at undermining the campaign of state Rep. Summer Lee, D-Swissvale, in the 12th Congressional District race are any indication, the contempt for the intelligence of Allegheny County’s voters is running especially deep these days.
The United Democracy Project, an offshoot of a pro-Israel super PAC, has flooded local airwaves and mailboxes with a smear of Ms. Lee that paints her as insufficiently loyal to the Democratic Party and President Joe Biden.
Both the TV spot and the mailers point to a series of tweets Ms. Lee made between 2019 and 2021 that allegedly reveal her intent to undermine the Democratic Party from within. “She calls herself a Democrat,” the TV spot says during an ominous closeup of the candidate, “but Summer Lee said she wanted to dismantle the Democratic Party, and she’s done everything in her power to do just that.”
Then the commercial pivots to a split shot of former President Donald Trump and then-candidate Joe Biden. “When Joe Biden was running against Trump, Summer Lee attacked Biden’s character, said he’d take us backwards. And Lee refused to support Biden’s infrastructure plan that’s now rebuilding bridges and roads in Western Pennsylvania,” the voiceover says.
“Summer Lee. More interested in fighting Democrats than getting results. UDP is responsible for the content of this ad.”
As intellectually dishonest smears go, the UDP’s campaign is a whopper that willfully ignores the context of the tweets and Facebook posts it quotes to argue that Ms. Lee is determined to “dismantle” the Democratic Party.
There is no acknowledgment that in the quotes reproduced that apparently spotlight her “disloyalty,” Ms. Lee was engaged in a back-and-forth with far-left critics who wanted her to account for why she continued to run as a Democrat instead of as a Green Party candidate.
Ms. Lee expressed her skepticism about third-party movements and insisted she would be in a better position to advance the interests of her constituency as an elected Democrat who wasn’t beholden to the party; this gives her freedom to be critical of the Democrats when necessary while having “access to the yay or nay button on the House floor.” Seems imminently sensible to me.
The quotes of Ms. Lee criticizing Mr. Biden were ripped out of context from social media posts made during the Democratic primary when the presidential candidate’s fond reminiscences about the “good old days” when it was possible to “get along with segregationists” in Congress put every Democrat’s teeth on edge.
At that point, Mr. Biden wasn’t any progressive or liberal Democrat’s first choice for the nomination. If it were up to me, Sen. Elizabeth Warren would be president, not Joe Biden. I’m sure some social media sleuth could produce a trail of texts, tweets and FB posts proving my bias, but that wouldn’t make me a “disloyal Democrat.” Ms. Lee campaigned hard for Mr. Biden once he secured the nomination. To suggest she has spent her time in office dismantling the Democratic Party from within and opposing Mr. Biden’s agenda is a cynical lie.
The $ 350,000 the UDP has poured into this media market attempting to paint Ms. Lee as a selfhating Democrat has been a colossal waste of resources so far. Ms. Lee is too well known for such a nakedly dishonest campaign to gain much traction, absent a substantive critique of her actual record as a state legislator.
If anything, the local media is now asking questions about the UDP and its support of far-right candidates in Pennsylvania and beyond, including those most vehemently opposed to Mr. Biden’s agenda.
Although the UDP hasn’t highlighted the Israel/Palestine conflict in its ads, that appears to be the main criterion determining whom it supports and attacks. Ms. Lee is considered insufficiently supportive of Israel’s policies, despite support she’s earned from progressive Jewish leaders, including Ritchie Tabachnick, the local head of J Street.
Mr. Tabachnick told WESA that the advocacy group backs both Ms. Lee and University of Pittsburgh Law School professor Jerry Dickinson, a fellow progressive also vying for the congressional seat, for being “aligned with us on our core issues.”
Regarding Ms. Lee, Mr. Tabachnick told WESA, “we’ve interviewed her twice locally, and the national organization has interviewed her,” he said. “I don’t see Summer Lee as someone who isn’t a friend of Israel. And there’s no credibility to the statement that she isn’t a true Democrat.”
Still the ads accusing Ms. Lee of being a sinister anti-Democrat continue to run. Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey and a host of elected Allegheny County progressives have offered full-throated denunciations of the ad campaign and have called upon candidate Steve Irwin — UDP’s preferred candidate — to do the same.
Since the deceptive ad campaign has been ostensibly mounted to boost Mr. Irwin, a lawyer and a behind-the-scenes Democratic mainstay of many decades, it isn’t likely he’s going to do so even if the ads turn his stomach. He’s smart enough to know the ads are unfair, but he also wants to be elected to Congress.
Mr. Irwin, who is supported by outgoing Rep. Mike Doyle, former Gov. Ed Rendell, former Mayor Bill Peduto and County Executive Rich Fitzgerald, isn’t responsible for what a third-party PAC does on his behalf. Still, there should be some serious cost-benefit analysis about whether any office is worth the risk of profiting from slander, when doing so brings one’s own integrity into question.
Until Mr. Irwin can put some distance between himself and the UDP, then the competing but essentially complementary visions of Mr. Dickinson and Ms. Lee remain the only viable options on the May 17 ballot for voters like me.