This is one of a series of articles looking at political ads leading up to the Nov. 8 election. View all of our election coverage at mcall.com/election. This story has been updated with new information about Lisa Scheller’s salary.
The race
Democratic Congresswoman Susan Wild faces Republican challenger Lisa Scheller on Nov. 8 in Pennsylvania’s 7th Congressional District, which covers all of Lehigh, Northampton and Carbon counties and a small part of Monroe County.
It’s expected to be a tight race that could determine which party claims control of the House of Representatives. Election forecaster FiveThirtyEight rates the race a tossup with Scheller slightly favored.
Congressional redistricting following the 2020 census made the race more of a challenge for Wild, who has held the seat since 2018. The 7th District now contains all of Carbon County, where 66% of voters chose former President Donald Trump in 2020.
Before being elected, Wild was a solicitor for Allentown. Scheller, who also ran against Wild in 2020, is President and Chairperson of international pigments manufacturing company Silberline Manufacturing in Tamaqua.
The ad
Wild’s ad aims to paint Silberline in a negative light by highlighting its ties to China and a supposedly false claim from Scheller about her 2020 salary.
The ad opens with a clip from Scheller’s address in October 2020 at the Lehigh Valley Economic Development Corporation Congressional forum, in which she says, “the first thing I did was I took my salary to zero” at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The voiceover calls this a lie, and points to her 2021 financial disclosure which, according to the ad, shows that Scheller took a $1.4 million salary in 2020.
The ad then pivots to another clip from the same forum, in which Scheller says “I am so proud of what made in America means.” The ad voiceover declares this statement “another lie,” and claims that Scheller slashed her U.S. workforce by 60% and closed two U.S. plants and opened two new ones in China.
The ad ends with a statement from the voiceover declaring, “Lisa Scheller: if she’s talking, she’s lying.”
Analysis
Through ads and campaign materials, Wild has repeatedly attacked Scheller for allegedly outsourcing jobs to China and having economic ties to the communist country.
Scheller’s salary
In Scheller’s financial 2021 disclosure report on the U.S. House Clerk’s website, Scheller reports a $157,594 salary for the year of 2020.
The $1.4 million figure cited in the ad combines Scheller’s reported salary with the minimum amount of business income Scheller made from Silberline’s international locations, according to Wild campaign manager Sarah Carlson.
In 2020, Scheller reported between $1 million and $5 million in Silberline business income from the company’s operations in the Shandong province of China, between $100,000 and $1 million in business income from Silberline’s location in Suzhou, China and Sao Paolo, Brazil, respectively and, between $50,000 and $100,000 in income from Silberline’s Puebla, Mexico, location.
Brenden DelToro, a Scheller campaign adviser, said Scheller took no salary at Silberline from mid April 2020 to mid April 2021. The $157,594 salary reported in her financial disclosure is the money Scheller made before she reduced her salary to $0 that week, he said.
DelToro shared an internal communication from CEO Gary Karnish that was sent to all Silberline employees on April 22 2020 that says Scheller reduced her salary to $0 that week.
The claim that Scheller “pocketed $1.4 million” is inaccurate, DelToro said, because business income is invested back into the company, not Scheller’s own bank account.
Outsourced jobs
The Morning Call verified the claim that Silberline’s U.S. job force has shrunk from 360 workers to 142 from 1998 until the present. According to a 1998 Morning Call article, Silberline employed 360 people across its three Pennsylvania plants. In Silberline’s 2021 Paycheck Protection Program application, the company reported 142 employees, a 60.5% decrease.
Silberline also closed two U.S. plants — one in Decatur, Indiana in 2019 and one in Lansford, Carbon County, in 2016. The company operates two plants in China according to its website, and has plans to open a third in 2023, according to a CEO Magazine report.
Scheller has said that all former employees at the Lansford site were offered jobs at the central plant in Tamaqua.
However, according to a 2020 Morning Call article, 55 Indiana workers who lost their jobs were eligible for assistance from the Labor Department because Silberline “has shifted to a foreign country the production of an article like or directly competitive with the article produced by the [Indiana] workers which contributed importantly to worker group separations.”
Scheller has denied that Silberline has ever outsourced jobs and said that global competition forced the company to consolidate U.S. operations. She has said the Labor Department’s determination is inaccurate.
Verdict
The claim Susan Wild’s campaign makes about Scheller’s 2020 salary is not accurate. An internal Silberline communication appears to show that Scheller did reduce her salary to $0 in April 2020. The ad also conflates Silberline’s business income with Scheller’s salary to make the claim that she pocketed at least $1.4 million, which is not the case, a spokesperson said.
The claim about Scheller’s company closing U.S. plants and opening plants in China is based in verifiable evidence.
