ERIE, PENNSYLVANIA – Jim Wertz was a longtime TV news cameraman and proud CWA member who, a few years ago, never imagined running for office.
Then, in 2022, longtime Erie Republican State Senator Laughlin sued Wertz and the local alternative monthly, The Erie Reader, for $1 million in defamation, a legal defeat that would bankrupt Northwestern Pennsylvania’s last surviving alt-biweekly.
In his article entitled “Erie at Large: A Congressman and a State Senator Walk Into a Bar,” Wertz wrote that Laughlin signed an amicus brief in Texas vs. Pennsylvania, which sought to invalidate mail-in ballots cast in Pennsylvania; thus, Laughlin supported insurrectionists. He also reported that Laughlin and local Congressman Mike Kelley were on proposed pardon lists in front of Trump’s top circle.
Wertz is currently being defended by the Reporters’ Committee for Press Freedom, which feels confident that Wertz will win in court.
“This is protected speech. It’s protected by the First Amendment. And this lawsuit just has no merit,” Paula Knudsen Burke of the Reporter Committee for Press Freedom told WJET/WFXP earlier this year.
The defamation lawsuit intended to intimidate a beloved, small-town reporter seems to have backfired, propelling Wertz into a competitive State Senate race against Laughlin that could decide control of the PA State Senate, which has been in Republican hands since the “GOP Revolution” in 1994.
