Autocracy appears to be winning across the globe, where Enlightenment values are under siege on all fronts. So you might have missed the grave threat to democracy walking among us on our very streets — at least according to nervous, and nerve-wracking, media reports.
That threat would be none other than Jeff Yass, the Main Line mega-billionaire — the wealthiest individual in all of Pennsylvania — who has contributed tens of millions to his favored political causes. He gave more than $1 million to a PAC that ran ads against progressive Helen Gym in the mayoral primary in the spring, and now more than one out of every three dollars spent in statewide judicial races emanate from his considerable checkbook
Locally, he’s funding ads targeting the Working Families Party’s candidates for City Council — incumbent Kendra Brooks and Nicolas O’Rourk, both of whom mystifyingly argue that the real problem facing Philadelphia is our city’s infinitesimal — not to mentget it — when one individual can spend so lavishly, the natural instinct is to recoil and see it as a threat to democracy. But the rhetoric about Yass doesn’t seem to square with reality. “Jeffrey Yass is a far-right billionaire who uses his wealth to elect extreme Republicans,” tweeted O’Rourke. Yass is often referred to by progressives, who shamefully stage demonstrations outside his Main Line home and at his company’s headquarters on City Avenue, as a “MAGA Republican.”
week ago, Rolling Stone published a piece headlined Meet The TikTok Billionaire Whose Campaign Cash Is Fueling the GOP’s Abortion Fights. (Yes, Yass owns 7 percent of TikTok). Last year, ProPublica investigated Yass’s finances and found that “the rising GOP Mega-Donor … paid an average federal income tax rate of just 19 percent” over six recent years.
Now, full disclosure: I’ve had maybe three conversations with Yass in my life. In each, I found him to be charming and super smart, but I have no dog in this fight, other than the fact that political distortions insult me, whether coming from the left or right. And, even though I may disagree with Yass on a whole lot of stuff — I, for instance, was quite impressed by how the State Supreme Court redrew our state’s congressional lines, and Yass is looking to upend the Court’s balance of power — the portrait of Yass painted by progressives and mainstream media alike as a MAGA-fueled Darth Vader just doesn’t square with the record.
