The Bigot Behind Brian Fitzpatrick’s Attack Ads
The Bulwark · C · trust 45/100
The embattled congressman has been pushing wild claims made by a family friend with a history of bizarre criminality and despicable social media posts.
Brendan Hartnett October 9 ∙ Paid Upgrade to listen 9 minute s 129 20 20 October Surprise: 30% OFF Bulwark+ for a year. Upgrade now. (Photo illustration by Bill Kuchman/ The Bulwark | Photos: Getty, X.com, Creative Commons) PENNSYLVANIA REPUBLICAN BRIAN FITZPATRICK is growing desperate. Facing strong national headwinds and a top of the ticket dominated by the popular incumbent Democratic governor—and with the Cook Political Report shifting his race from “Likely Republican” to “Lean Republican” just this morning —Fitzpatrick has resorted to an unprecedentedly deceptive campaign strategy.
Last week, Politico reported that Fitzpatrick’s campaign has been running ads attacking his Democratic opponent, Bucks County Commissioner Bob Harvie, by claiming Harvie is under investigation by the FBI. There’s no evidence of that.
It turns out Fitzpatrick’s attack ads cite articles from Patch, a hyperlocal news platform that encourages members to self-publish on their local Patch page. The posts are not written by journalists employed by the media outlet. Nor were they fact-checked. In fact, all of them were written by an individual with close personal and financial ties to Fitzpatrick.
The man behind the posts is former journalist and convicted turtle-smuggler Dave Sommers, 72, of Levittown, Pennsylvania. Sommers appears to be a family friend of Fitzpatrick’s. Between 2010 and 2022 , Sommers received thousands of dollars in payments and reimbursements from Brian Fitzpatrick’s campaigns as well as the campaigns of his late brother, Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick. The payments stopped the same year Sommers was charged with stealing a campaign sign belonging to Brian Fitzpatrick’s primary opponent.
That charge didn’t end the relationship between Fitzpatrick and Sommers, though. This past summer, Sommers attended Fitzpatrick’s wedding to Fox News White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich, posting pictures with the bride to his Facebook and Instagram accounts. And in another video posted to Sommers’s Facebook page, he sports a tank top that reads “TEAM FITZ”—the name of Fitzpatrick’s joint fundraiser for his campaign and leadership PAC.
Sommers is one of only 141 people whom Brian Fitzpatrick follows on his official Instagram page. (Fitzpatrick’s own wife is not even on that list.)
Sommers also seems to have been close to Fitzpatrick’s older brother, Mike, who died in 2020. In a 2023 post on Instagram, Sommers called Mike Fitzpatrick his “ brother .”
More broadly, Sommers’s Instagram features multiple photos of Fitzpatrick and other Bucks County Republican officials .
A deep search of Sommers’s social media accounts reveals a disturbing pattern of sexist, racist, and Islamophobic posts. So who exactly is this guy who has been publishing lies that his friend Brian Fitzpatrick has been campaigning on?
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