For Jason Richey, it was an abrupt political move that would surprise and sadden his most loyal supporters.
After campaigning for nearly a year as the outsider who would bring working-class values to one of the most powerful governor’s offices in the country, the Pittsburgh lawyer was dropping out.
He immediately endorsed his rival Bill McSwain, the darling of the GOP establishment, who was being bankrolled by one of the state’s wealthiest political action committees.
But then came a movement of money that would confound political experts in Pennsylvania and raise questions about how public dollars can be doled out — and more important, for what political purposes.
Just weeks after Mr. Richey dropped out, the same political action committee that was funding the McSwain candidacy turned around and dropped $250,000 into the bank account of Mr. Richey’s now-shuttered campaign.
Shortly after getting the money, Mr. Richey reimbursed himself for $150,000 he’d loaned his own campaign — money his campaign coffers didn’t have before the Commonwealth Leaders Fund donated it.
Eric Epstein, the founder of a well-known Pennsylvania political watchdog group, questioned whether the money and Mr. Richey’s decision to drop out were connected.
“I’m not alleging anyone broke the law. They just manipulated the system,” said Mr. Epstein, of Rock the Capitol and a longtime advocate for ethics reforms in state government.
Mr. Richey didn’t respond directly when asked in an email whether he was promised anything in exchange for exiting the race and supporting Mr. McSwain, but he said he endorsed his former rival “because I believed he had the best chance of winning the primary and in November.”
Mr. Richey said he sought the PAC’s coveted endorsement for governor but didn’t get it. “Yet because we share the same principles and values, I earned their financial support to run for office in the future,” Mr. Richey said.
In particular, he’s eyeing a run for Allegheny County executive next year, when the exit of term-limited Rich Fitzgerald will leave the seat open.
The Commonwealth Leaders Fund did not respond to repeated interview requests or to emailed questions from the Post-Gazette about the donations.
The cash transfers underscore the ease with which dollars move through Pennsylvania political circles — even when camps are in direct opposition — and the lack of limits that can be imposed on such gifts.
In neighboring Ohio, Commonwealth Leaders Fund couldn’t have given more than $14,000. In Maryland, $6,000. West Virginia donors top out at $2,800 per candidate per election.
Pennsylvania is one of only 10 states that sets no cap on donations, allowing wealthy donors to flood the state’s political system with as much cash as they want as quickly as they want.
Commonwealth Leaders Fund gets almost all of its money from two PACs funded by Jeffrey Yass, a billionaire and Pennsylvania’s wealthiest man, who has thrown tens of millions of dollars into the state’s political arena since 2019, state records show.
With no donation limits, Pennsylvania is in a league not with its neighbors but with North Dakota, Utah and Texas, among others.
“This is the wild, wild west,” said Joseph DiSarro, a political science professor at Washington & Jefferson College.
It’s also a place that’s wildly expensive: By jumping into a statewide race, candidates confront a daunting task of reaching voters in seven media markets, two major cities and swaths of farm- and forestland so far removed from large population centers that many still don’t have access to broadband internet.
Standing out
Mr. Richey’s campaign began almost exactly a year before the 2022 primary. One of the first to enter the fray, he was far from the last. The field eventually became so crowded that, at one GOP debate, the candidates were stacked in two parallel rows to fit them all on one stage.
Each candidate had to figure out how to stand out or risk fading into the landscape.
Mr. McSwain was seen by some loyal party members as the favorite, bolstered by a résumé that included a stint as a Marine Corps scout/sniper and a term as a U.S. attorney in the Trump administration. The eventual winner, state Sen. Doug Mastriano, was the conservative Christian firebrand and standard-bearer for former President Donald Trump’s lies about the 2020 election.
Mr. Richey was the kid from Aliquippa.
During Mr. Richey’s 51 years, his native Western Pennsylvania went from an industrial, blue-collar, Democratic bastion to a sea of red surrounding the blue island of Allegheny County.
The story that Mr. Richey’s campaign advanced about its candidate slotted neatly into that new political alignment: a former wrestler with a still-muscular build who became a three-time Academic All-American in college; the college graduate who worked in a steel mill to pay his way through law school.
Mr. Richey even snagged the endorsement of fellow Aliquippan and former Chicago Bears coach Mike Ditka, who promised voters that Mr. Richey wouldn’t forget about the working-class, post-industrial communities that powered Mr. Trump’s surprise 2016 Pennsylvania victory.
“Tough places make tough people,” the 82-year-old Mr. Ditka said in the campaign’s announcement of his endorsement.
For a first-time candidate, Mr. Richey showed rare talent when it came to connecting with average voters, Mr. DiSarro said.
“He can talk to just about anybody. He knows how to work a room,” Mr. DiSarro said.
Mr. Richey brought his “Contract with Pennsylvania” — a list of principles and policies he said he’d bring to Harrisburg — to small, intimate events in counties just outside the orbit of urban areas: Lawrence, Somerset, Clarion, Crawford. He stumped in Scranton and Hershey.
“He cornered the market on blue-collar appeal,” Mr. DiSarro said.
And then it was over.
A mirage
On March 17, Mr. Richey announced he was dropping out and endorsing Mr. McSwain, the Commonwealth Leaders Fund’s chosen candidate.
“From day one, I was in this race to win it,” Mr. Richey said in his withdrawal announcement.
His first campaign finance report showed he had loaned himself $1.4 million — almost the entirety of his war chest.
Such reports are more than mere lists of donors. They’re snapshots of a campaign’s finances that send important signals to rivals and the public.
“Generally, a politician who’s willing, as Jason did, to put in his own money is showing a seriousness about the campaign,” Mr. DiSarro said.
It signals to donors that a candidate is in the race to win it, giving them reason to throw in their own donations, Mr. DiSarro said. It can deter potential rivals from even bothering to enter the race if they don’t have the same kind of personal wealth. And it attracts media coverage by showing reporters that a campaign will have the resources to compete in a long, expensive statewide contest.
But what those donors, rivals and reporters didn’t know — and would not know for four more months when the next report would be filed — was that it was just an illusion.
On Jan. 3, Richey took back half the $1.4 million loan. The next day, he took back the other half.
But the public wouldn’t be able to find out until the next filing deadline of April 5, after he’d already dropped out, endorsed Mr. McSwain and begun repaying himself with the Commonwealth Leaders Fund’s money.
Mr. Richey told the Post-Gazette his $1.4 million is still available for a future run for office.
One way to allow greater scrutiny of such practices would be to require candidates to report on their finances more frequently, Mr. Epstein said.
“We probably need to re-examine campaign finance reporting based on this,” he said. “This is like buying a pack of cigarettes and getting a coupon 30 days later saying, ‘These might be hazardous to your health.’”
Mike Wereschagin: mwereschagin@post-gazette.com
First Published: July 3, 2022, 10:00 a.m.
Updated: July 5, 2022, 12:31 p.m.