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“In Congress, Chris Deluzio has been the fighter Western Pennsylvania deserves. He’s the real deal, and whether it’s holding big corporations accountable for dishonorable behavior or securing vital infrastructure investments, he has consistently put the interests of his community first. Chris is not afraid to take on MAGA extremists and is a staunch defender of voting rights, workers’ rights, and reproductive rights. Rob Mercuri meanwhile is just another suit, bought and paid for by special interests. He’s a threat to Pennsylvanians’ fundamental freedoms, and they will reject his extremism at the ballot box,” said DCCC Chair Suzan DelBene.
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To: Interested Parties
From: Aidan Johnson
Date: April 23, 2024
Subject: The Case Against Rob Mercuri
A Thornburg native, Iraq War veteran, voting rights attorney, and cyber security specialist at Pitt, Chris Deluzio has always stood up and fought for Western Pennsylvania.
Chris knows that for too long, Washington and Wall Street have prioritized corporate profits over people. It’s why he’s holding executives at U.S. Steel accountable for trying to sell out the union workers who built this country. And it’s why in the wake of the Norfolk Southern train derailment, he introduced bipartisan rail safety legislation to protect his community.
Chris is helping rebuild Western Pennsylvania’s infrastructure, creating good-paying union jobs in the process and lowering costs for working families. During his first term, he helped secure more than $11 million for the Pittsburgh airport and over $142 million for Pittsburgh’s Parkway East. Despite out-of-touch extremists in Washington playing politics with the federal budget, Chris was able to secure over $15.5 million that will be put towards better roads and transit services, funding for cops and firefighters, and parks and housing for his community.
Above all else, Chris is a staunch defender of Pennsylvanians’ fundamental freedoms. He joined the Navy after 9/11 to protect Americans’ rights and, in Congress, he’s continuing the mission. At a time when MAGA Republicans are focused on undermining our democracy, banning abortion nationwide, and threatening workers’ rights, Western Pennsylvania needs a fighter like Chris Deluzio, not a dangerous extremist like Rob Mercuri.
Mercuri is an out-of-touch, corporate shill who’s waging a war on Pennsylvanians’ rights. When he’s not cozying up to dark money donors and anti-union special interests, he is using his elected office to take lavish, all-expense paid trips. Mercuri is an anti-abortion extremist who wants to ban abortion with no exceptions for rape or incest. Mercuri has proven he can’t be trusted to protect the freedoms that matter most to Western Pennsylvania.
To put it simply, this race is between someone who answers to the people of Western Pennsylvania and someone who answers to the billionaire donors bankrolling his campaign. Rob Mercuri doesn’t stand a chance.
Waging A War On Women’s Reproductive Freedoms
Despite trying to hide his anti-abortion agenda, Rob Mercuri has spent his career waging a dangerous war on women’s reproductive rights. In the state legislature, Mercuri co-sponsored a near total abortion ban without exceptions for rape or incest. The bill would punish doctors with up to seven years in prison. He also voted for a constitutional amendment that would ban the right to an abortion, something the ACLU said would “threaten the fundamental rights of every Pennsylvanian.”
Shortly after launching his campaign, Mercuri attempted to scrub his anti-abortion record from his website. However, he was soon spotted at an anti-abortion rally organized by a group whose goal is to “ultimately make abortion unthinkable.”
In the 2023 off-year election, Democrats in Pennsylvania resoundingly rejected anti-abortion extremists. Voters in Allegheny County – home to PA-17 – backed the Democratic PA Supreme Court candidate over the anti-abortion Republican by a 25-point margin. Abortion rights continue to have historic levels of support with voters, including 66% of voters who oppose ongoing Republican efforts to pass a national abortion ban.
Western Pennsylvania deserves a representative who will fight for their rights, not take them away. As a veteran, Chris was willing to lay it on the line to defend Americans’ fundamental freedoms — and that includes reproductive rights. An original co-sponsor of the Women’s Health Protection Act, Chris understands what’s at stake, and will hold the line against the anti-abortion extremists targeting the freedoms he fought to protect.
A Corporate Jagoff In The Pocket of Dark Money Donors And Special Interests
As corporate special interests continue backing his congressional campaign, far-right extremist Rob Mercuri has fully committed to taking their anti-worker agenda to Congress.
Throughout his career, Mercuri fought against Pennsylvania workers, voting against extending safety protections, refusing to support raising the minimum wage, and even saying he doesn’t believe the government should help “ensure everyone has a livable income.” Strengthening salaries, benefits, and worker protections is a no-brainer and a top priority of Pennsylvania’s building trades unions and labor movement, but not for Rob Mercuri. When given the opportunity to pass legislation that protects workers’ rights and targets illegal employee misclassification, Mercuri instead decided to protect corporations and big businesses.
Now, Rob Mercuri is gearing up to be a rubber stamp for the Koch-network, which is actively pushing Congress to oppose Deluzio’s bipartisan Railway Safety Act. The legislation was introduced in the wake of the catastrophic Norfolk Southern derailment, but Mercuri’s dark money donors are leading a multi-million dollar effort to stonewall railway safety legislation and other measures, including the bill. On top of blocking railway safety efforts, AFP Action’s agenda also includes pro-China policies that encourage companies to ship jobs overseas. The anti-labor group opposed new tariffs to strengthen American steel and counter China’s aggressive trade policies.
If elected, Mercuri would oppose pro-labor legislation like the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, which he recently called “anti-American.” The legislation is endorsed by the AFL-CIO and would “make it easier for workers to organize and stiffen penalties against employers who violate it.”
Unlike Mercuri, Chris Deluzio can’t be bought. In Congress, he’s focused on corporate accountability and ensuring the government works for working people, regardless of which party is in power. For instance, Chris called on the Biden Administration to reject the multi-billion dollar purchase of U.S. Steel by a foreign company. While Mercuri tried to capitalize on the sale to score cheap political points, Chris got to work. The steelworkers have his back, because they know Chris won’t fold and let special interests hollow out Western Pennsylvania.
A Danger To Democracy And Voting Rights
Rob Mercuri, who supported Donald Trump in 2020, has long backed anti-democratic efforts in Pennsylvania. The far-right candidate’s record includes co-sponsoring a bill to limit the use of ballot-return drop boxes, supporting a provision to create a disingenuous bureau dedicated to re-litigating the 2020 election, and voting for a bill to raise the voting age to 21.
Currently, other anti-democratic extremists in Allegheny County are trying to cut tens of thousands of Pennsylvanians from voter rolls. The Chairman of the Republican Committee of Allegheny County — a fake elector that Mercuri refuses to condemn — has said he “appreciate[s] what many of these folks have done with their project” to challenge voters’ eligibility as a result of their belief that “Trump won [in 2020] and the election was stolen.”
If Mercuri can’t stand up to anti-democratic bullies in his local party, then he sure as hell can’t be trusted to stand up for Pennsylvanians’ fundamental freedoms in Congress.
From limitless, undisclosed special interest money running through our political system, to the January 6th insurrection at the Capitol, to Republican voter suppression efforts in Pennsylvania, Chris knows our democracy is in peril. He has taken his expertise and experience as a voting rights attorney and introduced a three-part policy roadmap needed to defend America’s democracy from the threat of rising anti-democratic forces. For Chris, it’s personal. At the age of 17 he entered the Naval Academy, took an oath of office, and has stuck by that oath ever since. He won’t back down to those on the radical right who would attack our freedoms and throw out our elections in exchange for power.
A Shady And Unethical Elected Politician
During his two terms in the state legislature, Mercuri received over $30,000 in travel and visited multiple countries on another organization’s dime, while voting against campaign finance transparency laws. In fact, Mercuri “topped the list” as the most egregious recipient of outside gifts and travel. One of those “gifts” was a trip to Germany that was “worth more than $11,000.” When it came time to change the culture of corruption in Harrisburg, the legislature “left a closely watched gift-ban bill on the cutting-room floor.”
Now that Mercuri is running for Congress, his complete disregard for ethical norms is catching up with him. Recently, the U.S. Department of Justice was encouraged to investigate Rob Mercuri’s apparent attempt to deny Pennsylvania voters critical information about his personal finances. According to the complaint, Mercuri had “numerous reporting errors and concerning omissions”’ in his 2023 Personal Financial Disclosure report that, “taken together, appear to have resulted in the improper disclosure, or complete non-disclosure, of between $681,024 and $1,694,000 worth of assets.”
WHAT THEY’RE SAYING
The Pennsylvania Capital-Star: Deluzio pushes for passage of rail safety legislation [The Pennsylvania Capital-Star, 9/8/23]
WTAE: $142 million in federal funding to improve Parkway East and MLK Busway [WTAE, 12/19/23]
NewsNation: US Steel sale ‘feels like a gut punch’: Rep. Deluzio [NewsNation, 12/20/23]
TribLive: Stormwater upgrades at Kennedy Park in Sharpsburg expected to keep flooding at bay [TribLive, 4/2/24]
Pittsburgh Union Progress: Pittsburgh Regional Transit gets $500,000 to help refurbish Dormont transit station [Pittsburgh Union Progress, 3/7/24]
Newsweek: Republican Scrubs Anti-Abortion Comments From Campaign Website [Newsweek, 8/16/23]
The Pennsylvania Capital-Star: Republican Rob Mercuri gets key endorsement from Koch-funded super PAC [The Pennsylvania Capital-Star, 9/23/23]
TribLive: Letter to the editor: 9/11 not a day for political fundraising [Trib Live, 9/23/23]
PoliticsPA: PA-17: Mercuri’s Incomplete Financial Disclosure [PoliticsPA, 3/21/24]
PATH TO VICTORY
Last cycle, Chris Deluzio won the only competitive House race in Western Pennsylvania, a district many pundits initially thought would fall into Republican hands. Chris ran on fighting for Pennsylvanians’ fundamental freedoms, lowering costs for working families, and ensuring that things are made in America by union workers. Now as a congressman, Chris has delivered on those promises. He has worked to hold railroads, U.S. Steel, and other corporations accountable for selling out American workers and endangering our communities by cutting corners on safety. And he has returned tens of millions of dollars to Western Pennsylvania for transportation, infrastructure, and public safety investments.
In the 2023 off-year election, Democrats had an historic performance in Western Pennsylvania, defeating an anti-abortion, election-denying Supreme Court candidate by 25 points in Allegheny County and flipping the District Attorney’s office in competitive Beaver County. Millions of dollars were spent reminding voters that the future of abortion access was on the line, and they haven’t forgotten. Rob Mercuri’s support for a six-week abortion ban with no exceptions for rape or incest will be front and center in this race. It’s why he wiped his anti-abortion agenda from his website, but his record is crystal clear.
Even Mercuri’s former primary opponent thinks he’s “a party-encouraged state representative with an extremist voting record,” going so far as to say that Mercuri’s nomination means Republicans “forfeited the race […] with a candidate who cannot win.”
Mercuri enters a crucial stage of the campaign with less than $541,000 cash on hand, compared to Chris’s $1.5 million in resources. To make up for the massive cash disadvantage, Mercuri is relying on dark money donors and the Koch-network to fund his campaign. Western Pennsylvania has no interest in electing a corporate shill who is waging a war against our workers, and they definitely don’t want a MAGA extremist who would take away their rights. This November, yinzers will reelect Chris Deluzio so he can continue doing what he’s always done: fight for the place he calls home.
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