Steve Irwin's congressional campaign admits some petition signatures were forged

A federal judge said last week that she never signed a petition for local congressional candidate and attorney Steve Irwin, and more forgery allegations related to Irwin’s candidacy have surfaced since.

Irwin is running in Pennsylvania’s 12th Congressional District, which includes the city of Pittsburgh, eastern and southern Allegheny County suburbs, and part of Westmoreland County. He’s from Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill.

The Irwin campaign acknowledged Tuesday that one of the campaign’s petition circulators “appears to have forged some signatures,” and the campaign has referred petitions gathered by Kirk Rice to the Allegheny County District Attorney’s Office.

Rice could not be reached.

“This is one individual out of more than 40 people who circulated and secured a total of more than 2,000 signatures on behalf of the campaign,” Irwin campaign manager Alistair Glover said in a statement. “The individual circulator in question has a long history of circulating petitions for Allegheny County Democratic candidates. His actions are not only wrong, but they are also potentially unlawful.”

Allegheny County District Attorney’s Office spokesman Mike Manko said the office has yet to receive anything from Irwin’s campaign.

As part of 17 pages of petition signatures turned in by Rice, one included a signature from Cathy Bissoon, a federal judge. Ethics rules frown on judges engaging in political activity.

Bissoon told WESA-FM last week that she didn’t sign the petition form. When reached by the Tribune-Review on Tuesday, Bissoon said she had no further comment.

Rice submitted hundreds of signatures for the Irwin campaign. Two of them were for Alex and Selma Su of Pittsburgh’s Lawrenceville neighborhood. Alex Su told the Tribune-Review that he and his wife didn’t sign the petition form turned in by Rice. Other media reports indicate that several other registered voters denied signing petitions submitted by Rice.

The Irwin campaign said Rice has a long history offering his petition gathering services for Democratic candidates in Allegheny County. According to campaign expenditure reports, Rice was paid thousands of dollars by several judicial candidates in 2021, 2017 and 2015.

Rice is listed as the Harmar chairman for the Allegheny County Democratic Committee. Rice used to clerk for Pittsburgh City Controller Tom Flaherty, but was fired in 1990 after being arrested for using bogus prescriptions to get drugs.

The 12th District race for the Democratic Primary includes Irwin, state Rep. Summer Lee, University of Pittsburgh law professor Jerry Dickinson and nonprofit founder Jeffrey Woodward.

Dickinson called on Irwin to drop out of the race. The Irwin campaign said in a statement that Irwin would not drop out.

In a statement, Lee’s campaign said that even though Rice was responsible for more than one-third of Irwin’s signatures, the campaign will not challenge Irwin’s petitions because it believes he still gathered more than 1,000 valid signatures.

However, Lee said Irwin’s campaign cut corners and cheated.

“Kirk Rice was not a rogue circulator,” Lee said. “The Steve Irwin campaign contracted him, approved his petitions and celebrated his work. They should be held accountable.”

Jake Sternberger ran the campaign for former Democratic Senate candidate Joe Sestak in 2016. He said gathering petition signatures is not as simple as people might assume, and that the process requires a lot of leg work.

Congressional candidates have to gather at least 1,000 signatures of registered voters that live within the district. This year, candidates had less preparation time because exact district boundaries were not known until just before the period when candidates could legally gather signatures, which is less than three weeks long.

Sternberger said Pennsylvania candidates typically use two strategies: get a large team of volunteers to help gather petition signatures, or use petition signature experts who will charge a certain rate per signature gathered.

He said that using these purported experts comes with risk, as they sometimes can prey on candidates, particularly in judicial races where there are a lot of candidates.

“In every community, across both parties, there are people who prey upon candidates who need signatures in a very short amount of time,” Sternberger said.

He said often candidates early in their campaigns will focus their resources and efforts on raising money, rather than building a large base of volunteers that can help gather petition signatures. Sternberger said that can make gathering signatures more difficult, and potentially get campaigns in trouble.

Through the end of last year, Irwin’s campaign had raised the most money among 12th District candidates, according to Federal Election Commission records. His $337,000 raised was more than $65,000 more than Lee, and $75,000 more than Dickinson, the records showed.