PITTSBURGH — Pennsylvania politicos say that the personal attacks Jeff Bartos lobbed at rival Sean Parnell in Pennsylvania’s Republican primary race shows how important it is to get Donald Trump’s endorsement for office. Bartos’s failure to get it set off one of the dirtiest campaign smears in the state’s primary political history.
On Wednesday, Bartos attacked Parnell as “unelectable” because of temporary protective orders that were filed by his wife as their marriage began to crumble.
Both orders were temporary and expunged — the first withdrawn by his then-wife and dismissed, the second dismissed in a hearing by a judge. Parnell was granted joint custody of the children with his wife within days of the initial filings.
This attack came days after Trump endorsed Parnell, a decorated former Army Ranger who wrote a New York Times bestseller on his service in Afghanistan. Parnell first ran for office last year when he challenged incumbent Democratic Rep. Conor Lamb for the 17th Congressional District. He lost only narrowly to the Allegheny County Democrat.
G. Terry Madonna, political science professor at Millersville University, said Bartos appears to be reacting to Trump’s endorsement to Parnell. “In a Pennsylvania Republican primary, which is a closed race, that endorsement means everything, from enthusiasm from the base to fundraising advantages,” he said.
Madonna said that the fact the records were temporary and expunged, and Parnell has retained 50% custody of the children since that time, might mean that Bartos may have hurt himself more than Parnell. “Let me put it this way,” he said. “If there was a serious problem, would he have gotten custody?”
As to the impact on Parnell, Madonna said it is too early to assess. Pennsylvania operatives on both sides of the aisle were already aware of the expunged records since Parnell ran for Congress last year, but the Bartos campaign was the first ever to directly email it to reporters.
When Bartos announced his candidacy in March, he said in his launch video that he would focus on talking about issues and not tearing each other down. The Bartos campaign responded in a request for an interview that he would be unreachable for comment before this story’s deadline.
Washington County Republican Chairman Dave Ball, who has not endorsed in the race and remained neutral, said he was dismayed in what Bartos had done, “I find it very, very disappointing,” he said. “Jeff Bartos is an attorney. He should know that you simply do not say things like that, that are unsubstantiated and unproven and un-provable.”
Ball said you don’t go that low in a campaign in particular when you know three minor children are involved in something he cannot validate. He added that Trump’s endorsement of Parnell had been a death blow to Bartos’s campaign and the likely catalyst for his attacks. “He had a chance to show integrity and campaign on how he would approach the problems Pennsylvania’s face differently,” said Ball. “He chose instead to call his opponent an abusive person. He should drop out of the campaign because of that.”
Sam DeMarco, the chairman of the Allegheny County Republican Party, has pored over all of the documents regarding the allegations Bartos made. “Simply put,” he told me, “there is no there, there. From all the evidence that I’ve seen, I haven’t seen anything there that says that Sean Parnell has done anything wrong. And breaking news — divorces sometimes get ugly.”
DeMarco said although he hasn’t endorsed in the race, this incident rules out any possiblity that he would support Bartos. “Bartos is certainly not somebody I would consider going forward,” he said.
Brad Todd, who co-authored The Great Revolt: Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics with Salena Zito in 2018, is a strategist for Sean Parnell.
