PA-01: On Wednesday, just a day after philanthropist Scott Wallace handily won the Democratic nomination to take on GOP Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick in Pennsylvania's 1st Congressional District, the Forward reported that Wallace's charitable foundation had given $300,000 to several groups that support the controversial "Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions" movement against Israel, commonly known as "BDS." The donations from the $140 million Wallace Global Fund, which Wallace ran for 15 years until leaving the organization to run for Congress earlier this year, include grants to Jewish Voice for Peace, one of the most prominent BDS advocates, and to the parent company of a publishing house in support of a speaking tour for George Galloway, a notorious British anti-Semite and former member of Parliament.
Wallace responded by saying he "unequivocally disavows the BDS movement" and pretty much tried to disavow the grants, too, claiming they were "made by a member of the Wallace Global Fund's leadership from a discretionary fund that other leadership did not exercise authority over." That puts Wallace in a bit of a sticky position, though, because during the primary, he touted his fund's work on environmental issues as a campaign credential.
Wallace also lashed out at the NRCC, accusing the committee of being behind this unusually well-timed deployment of opposition research. Oddly, a Jewish Democratic activist in Pennsylvania says that Wallace's main primary opponent, Rachel Reddick, told her that she'd been aware of these donations, but if that's so, Reddick doesn't appear to have sought to publicize them. And ultimately, there's still the question of whether an issue like this will actually matter, or whether it's the kind of thing that only extremely plugged-in politicos care about. For what it's worth, Fitzpatrick does not yet appear to have commented on the matter.