A bitter battle between former mayoral candidate Jeff Brown and the city’s Board of Ethics has heated up again, and taken a personal turn.
The core legal issues were apparently settled months ago, when a judge ruled that a political action committee supporting Brown hadn’t broken campaign finance rules. The board and its executive director Shane Creamer withdrew an appeal last month and said they would seek changes in city regulations instead.
But Brown, a millionaire supermarket magnate who came in fifth place in last May’s primary election, isn’t ready to accept the win and move on.
He sued the board and Creamer this week, alleging they maliciously attacked him and harmed his reputation during the mayoral campaign.
Also suing are For a Better Philadelphia, the super PAC that spent millions on TV ads supporting Brown, as well as an associated dark-money fundraising nonprofit and the chairperson of both groups, lawyer David Maser.
Brown argues that Creamer and the board knew from the start that their legal theory for why the PAC broke the rules was invalid. Their fierce animosity to constitutionally protected dark-money political groups led them to file a frivolous lawsuit, embarrass Brown, and scheme to ensure his primary loss, they allege.
“It looks to me like Jeff Brown was being targeted by the board, and I want to know why that is,” said attorney Matt Haverstick, who filed the suit along with two other lawyers. Haverstick is a managing partner at Kleinbard LLC and frequently represents state Republican officials in legal matters.
The lawsuit seeks financial damages for the PAC, a declaration that Brown’s rights were violated, and an unusual “name-clearing hearing” that would seek to uncover whether Creamer or someone else leaked information about the board’s investigation to the media.
Creamer declined to comment. A Board of Ethics staffer did not respond to a request for comment.
In the past, Creamer has made it clear he believes the board has a duty to intensively police the activity of dark-money super PACs, which don’t reveal their donors and are only lightly regulated at the federal level. For a Better Philadelphia was the first such group to play a major role in a Philadelphia mayoral election.
“Running for office in this city is not like running for federal office. Philadelphia has different rules,” he wrote in a 2022 newspaper editorial. “And they will be enforced.”
A bombshell move
The Board of Ethics investigated For a Better Philadelphia last spring and concluded the political action committee had improperly coordinated its fundraising activities with Brown, for example by having him contact prospective donors and help organize a fundraising event.
Under the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, a class of committees called super PACs may accept donations of any amount and spend as much as they want, but they may not coordinate with candidates or campaigns. If they do, they become subject to contribution limits and can be fined for exceeding them.
The board demanded For a Better Philadelphia stop buying ads and making other expenditures to support Brown’s mayoral run. The PAC agreed to stop, but it continued paying for election mailers that did not specifically mention Brown, and did not admit fault.
In a bombshell move that shook the city’s political scene, on the day before the first televised mayoral debate, the board went to court to ask a judge for an injunction halting the PAC’s activities.
In its court filing, the Board of Ethics provided emails showing how Brown had helped the PAC raise money in 2022. It also said a local pro sports team — apparently the 76ers, who were seeking support for their arena plan — gave $250,000 to a dark-money nonprofit associated with the PAC; that the candidate’s company, Brown’s Super Stores, gave the PAC $1.25 million; and that two other Washington D.C. nonprofits funneled money to the PAC.
For a Better Philadelphia representatives admitted Brown had worked with the PAC, but pointed out that he hadn’t yet officially declared his candidacy at the time. While his interest in running had been reported, as a private citizen he was not subject to the non-coordination rule, they said.
The board depended on an advisory opinion it had issued in 2018 saying that, once someone declares their candidacy, the ban on coordination retroactively applies for the previous 12 months.
Common Pleas Court Judge Joshua Roberts temporarily ordered the PAC to stop spending on behalf of Brown’s campaign. But in September he ruled against the Board of Ethics, saying the advisory opinion wasn’t binding and the coordination rule did not apply to the pre-candidacy period. In its suit against the PAC, the board “engages in a bit of sophistry,” Roberts wrote.
The board initiated an appeal but then withdrew it in December, saying it would be quicker to fix the law. “The goals of meaningful contribution limits and transparency in City elections are best served by amending [the regulation] to remove any doubt about the coordination rules,” it said in a statement.
A text and an email message
The gist of the new lawsuit is that Creamer and the board knew, or should have known, that the advisory opinion lacked the force of law and would fail in court, but nonetheless misused their authority as government officials to attack Brown in legal filings and the press, in order to tank his campaign.
It’s not unusual for attorneys to try out novel or untested interpretations of law in court filings. In addition, the advisory opinion was already five years old, having been released long before Brown began exploring a run for mayor.
But in the lawsuit Haverstick and his colleagues maintain that the board’s case was prosecuted “without probable cause, designed solely to damage” Brown’s and Maser’s reputations.
“I don’t think the board actually believed its own theory,” Haverstick said. “That’s established by the documents in some of the correspondence we have. You combine that with the aberrant way that this case was handled — it’s different than any other one we’ve seen — and you gotta wonder, why did they do this?”
The suit offers as evidence a set of December 2022 text messages between Creamer and then-Inquirer reporter Chris Brennan, which the city released as part of a Right to Know public records request.
In one message, Creamer says a different part of the city’s campaign finance law “‘applies to ‘candidates,’ which at this point includes publicly declared candidates.” That shows Creamer knew the rule about coordinating with PACs did not apply to Brown before he declared, according to Haverstick.
As evidence that Creamer was driven by personal animus toward the PAC and dark-money groups generally, the suit cites an email he sent to the PAC’s lawyers last spring. The message was later quoted in an Inquirer article.
“These are bad people who are not negotiating in good faith,” Creamer wrote, referring to the PAC. “[W]e are prepared to go to court to expose the most massive scheme to circumvent the city’s contribution limits in 17 years. I consider negotiations over. I don’t trust you.”
In a statement to Billy Penn, For a Better Philadelphia called Creamer “an ideological zealot, not the steward of public trust he claims to be.”
The lawsuit argues Creamer was driven in part by a desire to impress Inquirer reporters Brennan and Sean Collins Walsh. He was “motivated to reap the benefits of the media coverage” and “relished the attention lavished on him by compliant Inquirer reporters,” the suit says. He “is a prolific texter, especially with the Philadelphia Inquirer reporters who dutifully reported on the Frivolous Lawsuit, Brown, and Maser (and always in an unfavorable light).”
The suit goes on to say, without providing evidence, that Creamer “on multiple occasions leaked confidential information about plaintiffs,” which could be a violation of city law. He traded “confidential Board information to Inquirer reporters in exchange for flattering and gratuitous news coverage,” the suit maintains.
Suing may allow the PAC’s lawyers to subpoena records and depose Creamer and others in an effort to dig for alleged leaks.
A big drop in the polls
To support the argument that the Board of Ethics wanted to harm Brown’s chances of becoming mayor, the lawsuit notes the board went to court the day before the first televised debate, and quotes an Inquirer article that said the legal battle “contributed to Brown’s fifth-place finish in the Democratic primary.”
A poll by the firm FM3 commissioned by For a Better Philadelphia in early March showed Brown at 24%, followed by Allan Domb and Helen Gym at 15%, a representative of the PAC said. Brown was viewed favorably by 45% of those surveyed and unfavorably by 19%, for a net rating of +26%.
By mid-April, about two weeks after the Board of Ethics court filing, he was polling at 10%. He was viewed favorably by 31% and unfavorably by 45%, for a net of -14%, according to For a Better Philadelphia.
However, factors other than the ethics complaint were also in play. Brown sought to become Philadelphia’s mayor without having served in or run for office before, something that has never happened in the city’s modern history. He was endorsed by the FOP and some other unions, but not by big political players like the Building Trades Council or the teachers union.
Many voters knew his name from the television ads he and the PAC ran starting in December 2022, and didn’t see much of the other candidates until closer to the May primary. Cherelle Parker only made her first TV ad buy in early March, and spent only a small amount compared to Brown and Domb, before going on to win the race.
Brown also drew negative national attention during the debate for a comment he made about environmental racism and the city of Chester.
