GOP Megadonor’s PAC Fires Off First Ads in Summer Lee’s Democratic Primary

A political action committee funded by a Republican megadonor is running the first ads of the Pennsylvania primary season by an outside group attacking Rep. Summer Lee, D-Pa.

The group, Moderate PAC, launched in January 2023 to target progressives in Democratic primaries. It’s doing so with Republican money.

The ads back the candidate recruited by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee to run against Lee, Bhavini Patel, in hopes of making it to a general election against Republican candidate Laurie MacDonald.

Although Moderate PAC has employed Democratic consultants, including former Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan, its primary funder is Jeffrey Yass, one of the richest man in Pennsylvania and a major donor to the GOP. Yass, though formally registered as a libertarian, is one of former President Donald Trump’s picks for Treasury secretary should he win election in 2024.

Yass, a co-founder of a large hedge fund, has become increasingly involved in spending against progressives, aimed at keeping a regressive tax code in place and cutting funding for public schools in Pennsylvania.

“Take a cue from Laurie McDonald and just run as a Republican.”

“If you have to rely on a Super PAC bankrolled by Pennsylvania’s richest Republican — who has made it his mission to defund public education and ban abortion in PA — you’re not just unfit to run in a Democratic primary, you’re actively anti-democracy too,” said Usamah Andrabi, communications director for Justice Democrats, which is backing Lee. “Take a cue from Laurie McDonald and just run as a Republican.”

Moderate PAC Donors

Moderate PAC president and founder Ty Strong told The Intercept that other Pittsburgh area donors, including labor unions, had given to the PAC to fund ads against Lee in the race for the Pennsylvania’s 12th Congressional District.

“All the money raised for the ads in PA-12 were received from members of that community and Pittsburgh labor unions,” Strong said.

Though he didn’t identify the labor unions, Strong named six individual Democratic donors. Among them were private equity and venture capital executives Todd Reidbord and Gregg Perelman, who run the Pittsburgh private equity firm Walnut Capital; Richard and Arlene Weisman, who are active philanthropists in Pittsburgh’s Jewish community; and Evan Segal and Andy Rabin of the 412 Venture fund.

Strong said the names of other donors would be revealed in the PAC’s next filings with the Federal Election Commission, which is due on April 15.

One of those donors, Segal, a Democrat who worked in the administration of former President Barack Obama, told The Intercept he hardly agreed with Yass on anything, including his reasons for funding the PAC in the first place.

“Mr. Yass’s reasons for funding this are in support of a very, very ultra-right-wing group of crazies who despise Summer Lee,” he said. Though he is supporting Yass’s PAC, Segal said, “I don’t support people on the extremes.”

Segal said he gave to Yass’s PAC not because he believes the enemy of his enemy is his friend, but that observers are anticipating further outside spending to back Lee. “We firmly believe that there will be money that will come in from the outside — from people who also hate marginalized communities — to support Summer Lee, as well as people from the right like Mr. Yass who want to run these Machiavellian games with their billions of dollars,” Segal said. (The other five identified donors did not respond to a request for comment.)

Segal said he’s backing Patel because she’ll support Democratic leaders including President Joe Biden, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and House Majority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., to fight for issues like reproductive freedom and women’s equality.

Past Spending Against Lee

For her part, in a press statement last week, Lee said, “Republican-funded Super PACs and their chosen candidate couldn’t stop us last cycle, and they won’t stop us this time.”

Lee faced an onslaught of spending from pro-Israel lobbying groups in 2022. AIPAC and its ally, Democratic Majority for Israel, spent millions against her.

It’s also not the first time Lee’s opponents have claimed she’s not really a Democrat — while themselves taking money from Republicans. Patel and her campaign have strategized about how to encourage Republicans to get involved in the primary, how Patel’s campaign appeals to Republican voters, and how the campaign can encourage Republicans to switch parties to vote in the April 23 primary.

Moderate PAC’s Strong compared the donors who funded the new ads to one of Lee’s donors. “This is in contrast to Rep. Summer Lee, who receives money from people condemned by the White House,” Strong added.

Strong said he was referring to Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, whom the White House denounced in December after he said he was happy to see the people of Gaza breaking the long-running siege against the territory on October 7. Awad has explicitly condemned the Hamas attack and clarified that his comments were in support of Palestinians’ fight against Israel’s illegal occupation, not in support of Hamas.

Yass is also a major donor to a far-right Israeli think tank that has tried to reconfigure the country’s judicial system and suppress criticism of human rights abuses by the Israeli government.

Correction: March 21, 2024
This story has been updated to correct an errant reference to Andy Rabin’s party registration; he is a Democrat, not a Republican.