Environmental Group Buys Ads Against Scott Brown (VIDEO)
The League of Conservation Voters launched a TV ad against Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) today, a $1.9 million buy in the Boston media market over the next month. The ad, which will air on broadcast and cable, targets Brown on his environmental record. It plays into a key Democratic narrative that Brown, who promised to be an independent voice for Massachusetts, has not lived up to his word and that Washington, D.C., has changed him.
The ad begins with a Brown-like figure shedding a barn coat — not unlike Brown’s — revealing a suit underneath as he gets into a truck — not unlike Brown’s signature GMC truck, which played a role in his upset 2010 special election victory. The Brown stand-in drives toward the Capitol.
“Scott Brown’s gone to Washington and something’s gone horribly wrong,” the male narrator intones. “Brown sided with Big Oil, taking thousands from oil companies just weeks before he voted to keep their special tax breaks. And voted repeatedly against our environment and public health.”
As the Brown-like figure throws litter from his truck into the woods, the narrator says, “No wonder Brown got a rating of zero from the League of Conservation Voters.” The ad then asks voters to call Brown and tell him “to support the Close Big Oil Tax Loopholes Act.”
The Brown campaign cried foul on the ad. “Just in time for Halloween, the League of Conservation Voters group is spending nearly $2 million on negative attack ads trying to scare voters and playing tricks with Scott Brown’s pro-jobs voting record,” Brown campaign manager Jim Barnett said in a statement.
Brown is likely to face the Democratic frontrunner for the nomination, Harvard professor Elizabeth Warren, and Barnett said the ad was meant to benefit her. He called on Warren to condemn the spot and ask the LCV to pull it off the air. The ad buy is likely a harbinger of the massive amount of outside money likely to play in the Massachusetts Senate race for both sides.
The LCV is a nonpartisan group, but it mostly targeted Republicans in the 2010 cycle.
Watch the ad:
