A state-funded private investigator. Implied threats of jail
time. Ads stonewalled by the state’s major billboard company.
Impending lawsuits. Chris Lilik and Ryan Shafik never imagined
they’d face these challenges as they launched Young Conservatives
of Pennsylvania’s Harrisburg office this summer. But when they
decided to expose the state legislature’s massive graft, they
experienced first hand the dark side of Pennsylvania politics.
As previously
detailed
by Ralph R. Reiland on this website, Pennsylvania state legislators
quietly voted themselves a 16 to 37 percent pay raise at 2 a.m. on
July 7 without a debate. This raise came on top of an annual 5.2
percent cost-of-living increase, vehicles, full pension and
insurance, “walking around money,” $128 per diem, and no-receipt
expense accounts. And by raising salaries through “unvouchered
expenses,” the legislators made an end-run around the
constitutional mandate that lawmakers not collect their pay hikes
until they’ve been reelected.
Voters and editorialists across Pennsylvania were appalled, but
the Young Conservatives of Pennsylvania (YCOP) mounted the lone
major counterattack. After YCOP launched InformedPA.com —
complete with “Remember the Pay Raise” bumper stickers, sample
billboards, and online donations — money poured in, to the
impressive tune of $10,000 over ten days.
Lilik and Shafik targeted with billboard and radio ads three
leaders from each party: the Republicans are President Pro Tempore
Sen. Robert Jubelirer, Majority Caucus Chairman Sen. Noah Wenger,
and Majority Leader Sen. David “Chip” Brightbill; Democrats include
Minority Leader Sen. Bob Mellow, House Minority Leader Rep. Bill
DeWeese, and House Minority Whip Rep. Mike Veon.
YCOP approached Lamar Outdoor Advertising, Pennsylvania’s major
billboard purveyor, with its ads. Lamar officials initially
accepted the artwork in late July, Lilik says, only to reject them
weeks later as “negative political ads.” Local media suspects that
Lamar’s explanation is less than honest. The Wilkes-Barre Times
Leader reported last week that Pennsylvania Lamar
executives have given almost $30,000 to state political leaders and
their campaign chests, including large amounts to Mellow and House
Speaker John Perzel. Lamar’s political action committee,
consistently funded by employees, gave $36,000 to state campaigns
and PACs. Lamar officials did not return a phone call from
TAS Thursday, but told the Times Leader there was
no “quid pro quo” at work in the decision to reject the ads.
Lilik and Shafik have found independent local media to run the
billboards and radio ads, which should be fully launched later this
month, though Plan B comes at a higher cost and effort.
And the Republican establishment appears to be discreetly using
strong arms tactics against YCOP, according to Lilik. He said he
began receiving phone calls August 15 from Ron Harper Jr., a casual
email acquaintance through the Pennsylvania political blogosphere.
The Senate Republican Caucus pays Harper $3,000 a month as a
“contract researcher” who looks into “people and subjects important
to the Senate,” the Lancaster Intelligencer Journal
reported last year. According to Lilik, Harper told him
that he had a bright future, but he wouldn’t win against Jubelirer.
Lilik also said that Harper told him that if he ever were to go to
jail, Harper would visit him. “I took that as an implied threat,”
Lilik told TAS.
Harper apparently has a history of producing dirt on opponents
of the Republican leadership. The Intelligencer Journal
reported last week that Harper damaged the reputation
of one candidate running against Jubelirer’s man in 2003. He also
followed and photographed two other politicians who later resigned
their offices. Harper told the Intelligencer Journal that
he has not contacted YCOP “on the behalf of anybody” and Long
denied assigning him work on YCOP.
Additionally, a source close to the Republican leaders told
TAS that they are boasting that friends of Jubelirer are
close to suing YCOP to obtain the group’s donor list. Senate
leadership is confident that making donors public would dry up
funding. Jubelirer is telling rank-and-file membership that they’ll
be targeted by YCOP next, but Lilik believes the donor list will be
protected since YCOP is a 501(c)(4).
THE REPUBLICAN LEADERSHIP’S soft tactic is to portray itself as the
real conservative wing of the party — these are the same
“conservatives” who found Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell’s bloated
budget too slim for their tastes — and YCOP as an outside fringe
group. Sen. Jubelirer’s chief of staff, Mike Long, told the
Capitolwire news service that Republicans should instead set their
sights on Democrats, “I think it is absurd that a conservative
group would target Republican leaders…. It is a stupid mission if
one believes in conservative principles and conservatism, because
it is the Republican Party that preserves those ideas.” Long was
not available for comment this week.
YCOP executive director Ryan Shafik doubts the leadership’s
loyalty to conservative principles. “They’re Republicans,” Shafik
said Wednesday, “but they’re there for contracts and
patronage.”
A man quite familiar with tension between conservatives and the
establishment in Pennsylvania, Pat Toomey, now president of the
Club for Growth, told TAS Wednesday that YCOP’s message is
hardly an unwarranted attack by outsiders. “It’s extremely
offensive to the vast majority of taxpayers,” he said. “I can
assure you that a majority of mainstream voters are upset about
this pay raise.”
Likewise, Lilik said this issue presents an opportunity for
either party. “Whichever party took the lead and opposed the pay
hike would be the hero right now,” Lilik said. They’ll have that
chance as YCOP’s ads hit Pennsylvania’s air and highways this month
and the state legislature returns from recess September 26. The
Young Conservatives of Pennsylvania will be greeting them with a
rally and, if they raise more money, ads targeting more leadership
members.
