Democrats use child sexual abuse issue against Republicans in Lancaster County's key midterm races – LancasterOnline
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A campaign sign for Rep. Tom Jones, who is running for Pennsylvania’s 36th Senate district, is posted along Linden Avenue in Elizabethtown on Wednesday, May 6, 2026.
A mailer sent out by Tom Jones’ campaign attacking Democrat James Malone.
A mailer sent out by the Pennsylvania Democratic Party attacking Brett Miller.
A political mailer paid for by First Amendment LLC attacking Democrats James Malone and Brad Chambers.
A campaign sign for Rep. Tom Jones, who is running for Pennsylvania’s 36th Senate district, is posted along Linden Avenue in Elizabethtown on Wednesday, May 6, 2026.
Victims, their families and legal advocates have spent years pressing lawmakers to create a two-year window for child sexual abuse survivors to file civil lawsuits against their accused perpetrators. Now, Democrats are using the issue to target Republicans in key legislative races, including in Lancaster County’s 36th Senate and 41st House districts.
Ads targeting GOP state Reps. Tom Jones and Brett Miller say the two acted to protect child predators by repeatedly voting against bills to grant survivors more time to pursue legal action.
One such example is a TV ad paid for by Democrat James Malone, the incumbent running in the 36th, that flashes photos of Jeffrey Epstein on the screen. The infamous sex trafficker, the ad says, is the type of person Jones has voted to protect during his two terms in Pennsylvania’s House of Representatives. Jones is challenging Malone in the 36th.
In the 41st House District race, a mailer sent by the Pennsylvania Democratic Party claims Miller has voted against giving survivors “a chance for justice.”
The attacks are a sign of how competitive both races are — polling by State Navigate, a national nonprofit that studies voting trends in state legislative districts, found that just a couple percentage points separate the candidates in both races with less than three weeks before the Nov. 3 election. State Navigate’s polls show Jones and Brad Chambers, Miller’s Democratic opponent, will flip the seats in their respective races.
Jones, who currently represents the 98th House District, called Malone’s TV ad “disgusting” and “categorically false.”
“I have consistently supported maximum punishment of sexual abusers and ensuring survivors receive justice,” he said in an email.
Lawmakers in 2023 reignited debate on the policy at the urging of then House Speaker Mark Rozzi, a Democrat who represented a district in Berks County until 2024 and has been open about his experiences with childhood sexual abuse. House Democrats supported the effort, while Republicans were largely opposed, including Jones.
Miller blasted Democrats for leveraging the issue in campaign ads, saying the attacks show the “extent they will go to lie in order to obtain power.”
“I will not play games with these victims for political purposes,” he wrote in an email. “They have been lied to enough. The fastest way to justice for them was through a bill that would pass constitutional muster.”
A mailer sent out by the Pennsylvania Democratic Party attacking Brett Miller.
Jones said he opposed the legislation because it raised “serious concerns of constitutionality, due process violations, and created legal confusion rather than actually achieving justice for survivors.”
Miller similarly said he voted “no” because of his concerns about the bill’s constitutionality. He pointed out that he has voted in favor of the bills on multiple occasions dating back to 2019, including instances in which Jones opposed the legislation.
Jones pointed to Maryland lawmakers’ success in capping the settlement payouts offered to survivors after the state eliminated its statute of limitations for child sexual abuse claims in 2023. According to a May 2025 article by the Associated Press, Maryland was facing billions of dollars in liability costs after a wave of claims were made against public institutions.
Jones argued his support for sexual abuse survivors is shown through other legislation he supports, including bills that would require human trafficking training for hospitality workers, create further penalties for people who disseminate artificially-generated sexual images without consent, and establish a “safe harbor” for sexually exploited children. Those bills received near unanimous support in the Pennsylvania House.
The Republican also noted legislation he cosponsored, including bills to create stricter standards for what qualifies as child pornography (to include artificially generated content) and to upgrade corruption of minor charges to a felony of the first degree when the perpetrator is a teacher or coach. Those bills never went to the House floor for a vote.
The Hempfield and Manheim Township Republican Committees came to Jones’ defense on social media. “We understand Democrats are desperate to keep this seat,” the committees posted on Facebook, “but misleading the public should never be tolerated.”
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Malone stood by the decision to include Epstein in the commercial.
“Epstein is a real life caricature of the kinds of people you’re allowing to get away with this disgusting behavior,” he said.
Shortly after Malone’s attack ad hit the airwaves, voters were blasted with another ad from Jones’ camp that seemed to come as a response. That ad accused Malone of putting Pennsylvanians in danger by voting against keeping convicted murderers like Percy Perez behind bars.
Perez is a Reading man convicted in 1997 of second-degree murder for the death and rape of a 16-month-old child.
A mailer sent out by Tom Jones’ campaign attacking Democrat James Malone.
The Lancaster County GOP has also paid for social media ads that accuse Chambers of exploiting children because he supported a Drag Queen Story Hour event that had been planned at the Lancaster Public Library.
An independent political action committee, First Amendment LLC, paid for mailers that feature a photo of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska who was stabbed to death on a train in North Carolina in 2025. The ad claims Democrats are “soft on crime” and “keep siding with criminals,” urging people to vote against Malone and Chambers.
The PAC is connected to the Virginia-based Make Liberty Win PAC, which is heavily funded by the far right group Young Americans for Liberty.
A political mailer paid for by First Amendment LLC attacking Democrats James Malone and Brad Chambers.
Michael Mezzetti, chair of the Lancaster County Democratic Committee, called the mailer a “last-ditch attempt at fear-mongering voters since (Miller’s campaign) cannot defend Miller’s record to anyone in Lancaster County.”
Asked about his decision to feature Perez in the ad, Jones said a family member of the victim contacted his office to talk about the GOP-backed legislation that would establish a 35-year mandatory minimum sentence for people convicted of second-degree murder. The bill came after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in March ruled mandatory life sentences for convicted second-degree murderers was unconstitutional.
Malone was one of a handful of Democrats in the Senate to support the Republican bill that would allow the possibility of parole after a person has served a 35-year sentence.
The Democratic-controlled House, meanwhile, passed legislation that does not set a minimum sentence and would grant parole eligibility after a person serves 30 years of a life sentence. When that bill reached the Senate, Republicans stripped the House’s language and substituted their own. Malone voted against the amended House bill, even though it closely mirrored the bill he voted for previously.
Malone said he supported the Senate’s initial version because he believed it was better crafted to address the issue raised by the state Supreme Court ruling on second-degree murder sentences. He said the new version stripped out language that would have actually responded to the court decision.
“We need to fix the issue and we need to make sure we are doing it appropriately,” Malone said. “It has nothing to do with letting dangerous murderers out.”
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