Russ Diamond

In 2005, after the state legislature voted itself a pay raise, Diamond created PACleanSweep.com, a Web-based political action committee dedicated to ousting every incumbent legislator in the state.[3][6] The anti-incumbency movement played a role in the ouster of a Pennsylvania Supreme Court justice and in the defeat of 17 incumbent state legislators in primary elections.[7]

Between 2004 and 2014, Diamond launched six failed campaigns for elected office:[8]

• In 2004, he ran simultaneously for the U.S. House of Representatives (from the Pennsylvania's 17th congressional district) and the state house (for the 101st Legislative District) as a Libertarian Party candidate.[3][9][10] He was defeated in both races, receiving 1.98%[9] and 16.52% of the vote, respectively,[10] losing the state House seat to Republican incumbent Mauree Gingrich.[11]

• In 2006, Diamond launched an independent campaign for governor. Diamond abandoned his run when he fell well short of the signature requirements to qualify for the ballot.[7] In March 2006, five board members of PACleanSweep, of which Diamond was the chair, resigned after learning that Diamond sought the governorship; the members said that Diamond was trying to co-opt the movement for his own ambition.[6] A legal battle in Lebanon County court resulted between Diamond and the organization's dissident faction over who had rightful ownership over the group's website and assets and who was the legitimate chairman of the organization.[12][13]

• In 2008, Diamond challenged Republican incumbent Gingrich for the 101st district seat in the Pennsylvania state House.[11] The campaign was acrimonious, with Gingrich calling Diamond unfit for office over comments he made regarding police.[11] Gingrich won with 64.53% of the vote, Diamond received 22.93%, and Bruce Kreider 12.54%.[14]

• In 2010, Diamond unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination for lieutenant governor. Diamond lost, receiving 4.49% of the vote, and seventh place out of a nine-candidate field.[15]

In 2014, Diamond successfully ran for the 102nd district[lower-alpha 1] to replace Representative RoseMarie Swanger, who spent four terms in the state House after being backed by Diamond's organization.[4] The campaign was contentious; Diamond's supporters filed legal challenges against the campaigns of Joe Eisenhauer and Wanda Bechtold, who sought the Republican nomination, and successfully got their names removed from the primary ballot (due to a failure to timely file financial disclosure forms and a failure to obtain enough signatures, respectively).[4] As a result of these challenges, Diamond was the only candidate on the ballot in the May primary, although Bechtold ran an unsuccessful write-in campaign.[4] Diamond won the general election with 45 percent of the vote, defeating Democrat Jake Long (who received 26%), independent Robert McAteer (who received almost 23% of the vote), and write-in candidate Bechtold. (Both McAteer and Bechtold indicated that they would serve as Republicans if elected.)[4] Diamond won reelection in 2016 with 70% of the vote,[17][18] won reelection unopposed in 2018,[16] and won reelection in 2020 with 70.8% of the vote.[19]

In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Diamond opposed public-health measures to prevent the spread of the virus. Diamond opposed Governor Tom Wolf's statewide mandate requiring the wearing of face coverings in indoor public places (saying that the order promoted "hatred and intolerance across Pennsylvania"), opposed Wolf's closure of non-essential businesses, and called on Diamond to fire Dr. Rachel Levine, the Pennsylvania secretary of health.[20] Diamond spoke at anti-shutdown rallies at the State Capitol and sponsored a resolution seeking to reverse Wolf's closure of nonessential businesses; the resolution passed the Pennsylvania General Assembly, but the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that it had no effect.[20] In May 2020, Diamond bragged on social media about shopping without a face covering.[21] In July 2020, Diamond mocked an statement against discrimination against LGBT people issued by Levine, who is transgender, by copying-and-pasting her statement and replacing the term "LGBTQ" with the word "unmasked" to allege discrimination against what he called the "unmasked community" (people who refuse to wear masks during the COVID-19 pandemic). Governor Tom Wolf condemned Diamond's statement and said, "We need the Republicans to stop spreading misinformation to the general public, and we badly need them to be more responsible and more responsive to the health and wellbeing of all Pennsylvanians. This dangerous, reckless behavior is not welcome in Pennsylvania."[22][23] Wolf called for the legislature to censure Diamond over the statement, but the Republican-controlled legislature chose not to do so.[20]

After the 2020 presidential election, in which Democratic nominee Joe Biden won Pennsylvania by over 80,000 votes, Diamond was one of 26 Pennsylvania House Republicans who called for the state's certification of presidential electors to be withdrawn and supported a resolution calling on Congress to consider Pennsylvania electors to be "in dispute." The resolution echoed Donald Trump's baseless claims of election fraud and his unsuccessful attempt to overturn the election results. Diamond made his call even after litigation brought by Trump's campaign were dismissed due to lack of evidence.[24] Diamond also joined eight other Republican state representatives, led by Daryl Metcalfe, who filed a lawsuit asking a Pennsylvania court to invalidate the state's final vote count; this claim was based on debunked conspiracy theories and claims that had already been rejected by state and federal courts in earlier litigation.[25] The suit was swiftly dismissed.[26]

In 2019 and 2020, Diamond proposed amendments to the Pennsylvania Constitution that would eliminate statewide elections for state appellate judges (the judges of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, Commonwealth Court, and Superior Court) would no longer be elected in statewide elections, but would be instead by elected by districts. If adopted, the proposal would tilt the composition of the courts in favor of Republicans. The Republican-controlled General Assembly advanced the proposal for geographic districts for state supreme court districts, on a largely party-line vote, with all Democrats and a few Republicans opposed.[27]