Several weeks back, the Pennsylvania press uncovered the fact that Marty Nothstein, the Republican nominee for the open Pennsylvania 7th Congressional District seat, was placed on unpaid leave by a former employer after he was accused of sexual misconduct. Now, slightly behind in polling, he has launched a vicious smear ad suggesting his Democratic opponent was complicit in child rape because she once successfully represented a non-profit in an insurance claim case.

The 30-second spot, launched over the weekend, claims that Democrat Susan Wild had worked as a lawyer for “a large corporation that employed a serial child rapist who raped and assaulted a young boy.” The ad then misleadingly suggests that she was involved in representing them against the victim, saying “after losing and settling, she tried to get the insurance company to pay, claiming the rape as a ‘medical incident’.” An image of Wild’s face appears with the word “guilty” in white capital letters over it.

Last week in a radio interview, Nothstein was even more blatantly dishonest, falsely claiming that “she lost the case, found guilty.” But Wild did not represent the organization — a not-for-profit mental health provider — against the victim, nor was she “guilty” of anything. According to a local newspaper, her involvement was only in a legal action forcing the non-profit’s insurance carrier to pay the cost of the settlement. And their effort was successful, eventually the court did order the insurance company to pay the claim as a “medical incident” under the policy.


After local media reported in August that Nothstein was the subject of a misconduct claim after an alleged incident from around 2000, he said the allegation was “100 percent false” and that there was “no victim.”