A healthcare start-up executive who is currently serving as Miss Pittsburgh created a new Super PAC dedicated to electing candidates that will tackle rising crime rates and support law enforcement.
Madison Campbell, the CEO of Leda Health, launched the Survivor PAC to fund candidates challenging elected officials who have backed efforts to defund the police. In particular, the PAC has its sights on Pennsylvania Congresswoman Summer Lee.
Campbell told Fox News Digital on Nov. 20 that polling conducted by the PAC found Allegheny County residents believe that "crime has gotten significantly worse" in the last five years. They are particularly concerned about sexual assault, rape, and antisemitism.
“We polled what constituents think about antisemitism and the rise of hate speech happening in the Jewish population, and over 80% of Allegheny County extremely is worried about what happened after Oct. 7 and protecting their Jewish neighbors,” said Campbell. "And they have a very unfavorable appetite for Summer Lee returning."
Miss Pittsburgh said her aim is “to show data to the American public in specific races" that voters would enthusiastically support tough-on-crime candidates who are "going to fight for the Jewish people."
"And I can tell you, anecdotally, from talking to a lot of my friends who are Jewish and living [in Pittsburgh], they don't feel represented by Summer Lee," Campbell said.
During the interview, she said she would walk around Pittsburgh alone at the age of 12 but was “shocked” by the city's transformation when she came back from college.
"I have to tell you, it reminds me of San Francisco," Campbell said. "There are not only tons of homeless encampments, there are needles, there is feces."
Campbell has previously spoken about her experience as a victim of sexual assault. She founded MeToo Kits, a do-it-yourself rape kit company, in 2019. The product was intensely criticized, and Campbell was told that, because of the risk of cross-contamination, the kits would be never admitted as evidence in court.
She rebranded the business as Leda Health three years later and expanded its services to include Plan B, STI testing, and a 24/7 support line.
Campbell has described her upbringing to The Cut as conservative but said she became a “militant atheist” while attending Hampshire College where she founded a chapter of Young Americans for Liberty. She previously interned with the Charles Koch Institute and Senator Rand Paul’s PAC.
The Survivor PAC, Campbell’s latest venture, was created with the intention of supporting victims of crime and supporting “innovative solutions.”
"We want to endorse politicians that are going to think out of the box when it comes to crime," Campbell said. "And that's not just sexual assault. That's all types of crime."
"There is political power to create innovative solutions to clean up our cities, but there needs to be willpower," she continued. "And a lot of these politicians lack willpower."
Lee, a Democrat, was elected in 2022 and is currently serving her first term in the United States Congress. She has been criticized for statements she made on X in favor of defunding police departments in 2020 and calling for reparations for African Americans. Former President Barack Obama and Senate candidate John Fetterman both backed Lee during her campaign.
“Public safety does not begin with policing. It begins with investment into divested communities where everything but police budgets have been defunded: education, infrastructure, good-paying job opportunities, transportation, housing, health care,” she told Teen Vogue when asked about the phrase “defund the police” in May 2022. “So no, I don’t think our police departments need millions of new dollars every year in their budgets.”
“I do think Black, brown, and working-class communities need that funding to exist, to survive, and thrive,” she added. “There’s a reason poverty and crime are always so inextricably linked: Policing and mass incarceration are just Band-Aids until we get serious about actually lifting all our communities up out of poverty and giving them the resources every community needs to thrive.”
Lee is considered to be a member of a progressive group of female congresswomen known as “The Squad.” She drew criticism in October when she said “all lives matter” during a press conference on the Israel-Hama war.
