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Recent campaign finance reports have thrown into question responses given by four Perkiomen Valley School Board candidates about whether their campaigns are receiving money from outside political action committees.
Four of the five candidates running on the Republican ballot line for the Perkiomen Valley School Board filled out The Mercury’s online candidate questionnaire, which included a question about PAC funding, and those replies were published verbatim.
Those four candidates — Russ Larson, Jay Cohen, Kim Mares and Matthew Dorr — all replied to that question by writing things like: “My campaign received funds ONLY from parents/voters in the community and did not have any PACs contribute,” was part of Larson’s answer.
“My ticket has its own PAC and has not received financial contributions from any outside PACs,” Dorr wrote.
“I have not received contributions from outside PACs,” Mares wrote.
“Outside of our own PAC (Vote 5 for PV), we have received no contributions or funding from any PAC,” Cohen wrote.
(The fifth member of the “Vote 5 for PV” team, Heidi Brown, did not respond to the questionnaire.)
But the most recent campaign finance forms posted on The Montgomery County Voter Services website, tell a different story.
According to the most recent filing for the “Vote 5 for PV” political action committee, a $2,500 contribution was made in August by the Pennsylvania Future Fund.
According to its website, “The Pennsylvania Future Fund is a pro-growth political action committee that is focused and committed to improving and maintaining the Republican majority in the Pennsylvania legislature and courthouses across the Commonwealth. Its members are men and women spanning the Commonwealth. The Future Fund is diverse in nature and proactive in the political process. These members have enabled us to be consistently ranked among the top ten PACs in Pennsylvania since 2001.”
“First time candidates and elected officials have relied on the support of the Pennsylvania Future Fund for many years. This support goes well beyond political contributions,” the website continues. “It ranges from financial donations and the purchasing of promotional materials, to providing staff assistance and district polling.”
The chairman of the board of the Pennsylvania Future Fund is Robert Asher, a major figure in Pennsylvania Republican politics and a former chairman of the Republican Party of Pennsylvania.
Submitted Photo
Robert Asher (MediaNews Group File Photo)
According to his profile on the website, Asher “is Co-Chairman of the Board of Asher’s Chocolates, a 4th generation family candy business founded in Philadelphia in 1892. He serves on the board of Visit Philly and has served on the board for the Delaware River Port Authority. He has been recognized for his public service by the Montgomery County ARC, Boy Scouts of America and The Union League of Philadelphia.”
What that website profile does not mention is that he also spent one year in federal prison after being convicted in 1987 of perjury, racketeering, conspiracy and bribery in connection with a state contract award, while he was chairman of the Pennsylvania Republican Committee. His case received national attention when his co-defendant, Pennsylvania State Treasurer Budd Dwyer, committed suicide on television just before sentencing.
Asher has also been a central figure in the disputes that have roiled the Montgomery County Republican Committee for years, going back to the upstart candidacies of Jon Fox, Mario Mele and a long-running dispute with former district attorney and county commissioner Bruce Castor.
All four Vote for 5 candidates were contacted by The Mercury and asked to explain the apparent contradiction between their statements and the campaign finance report.
As of 5 p.m. Friday, Cohen was the only candidate to respond. He wrote simply: “Jason Saylor runs the (vote5 for PV) PAC and none of the candidates are involved in that process.”
Contacted for comment, Saylor, who is the president of the Perkiomen Valley School Board but is not running in this election, replied “V5 pac supported 5 candidates in the PV election. These candidates were not involved with how the PAC is run or how I raised funds for the PAC.”
He also confirmed that this reply from a reporter seeking clarification is accurate: “when they answered our paper’s questionnaire saying they had not received any PAC money, other than from your V5 PAC, they were speaking for themselves. Your PAC received $2,500 from PA Future Fund, which V5 PAC then used to support their candidacy.”
However, no separate individual campaign financial report for Dorr, Cohen, Larson or Mares has been posted on the Montgomery County Voters Services website, suggesting support from the Vote for 5 PAC may be the only financial support their campaigns have received.
Four of the candidates running on the Democratic ballot line — Robert Liggett, Laura White, Todd McKinney and Wayde Weston — also responded to The Mercury’s candidate questionnaire.
However in their responses, all four acknowledged receiving contributions from outside PACs, including from the Pennsylvania State Education Association, the statewide chapter of the local teachers union.
The most recent Campaign Finance Report for the Democratic candidates’ PAC — Friends of PV Forward— has not yet been posted on the Montgomery County website, however, candidate Robert Liggett provided it to The Mercury for inspection and noted it is posted on the team’s Facebook site.
In addition to contributions from local PACs, like “Friends of Joe Webster,” “Friends of Trappe” and “Skippack Democrats,” the Friends of PV Forward PAC received $2,500 from the state teachers union, the exact amount their opponents received from Pennsylvania Future Fund” in the same reporting period.
“My campaign, PV Forward, and our PAC — Friends of PV Forward — has received endorsements from individuals and groups that align with our values, ethics and goals for governance. In some instances there have been monetary support associated with that endorsement,” White wrote in response to the Mercury questionnaire.
She even went so far as to list some of them: “All of our funding is public and transparent through normal campaign finance rules and practice. We are endorsed by: Rep. Madeleine Dean, D-4th Dist., state Rep. Joe Webster, D-150th Dist., state Rep. Matt Bradford, D-70th Dist., Collegeville Democrats, Montgomery Country Area 4 Democrats, Montgomery County Area 15 Democrats, PSEA-PACE, Perkiomen Valley Education Association, Skippack Democrats, Trappe Democrats. We have also received individual monetary contributions from friends, family, and community members,” White wrote.
Asked for comment, Liggett said “it’s interesting the way they tried to portray their fundraising efforts as coming from voters and residents and not from any political action committees, therefore trying to draw a distinction between their fundraising and ours. As I’ve said before I’m proud of our fundraising efforts. I’m humbled by the donations the community has supported us with and glad political action committees that align with our values have seen fit to support our campaign. I’m glad our support comes from both small and large donors, we have a broad spectrum of donors.”
