Ed Markey and Joe Kennedy clash over corporate PACs
The Senate primary race is already heating up.
The Massachusetts Senate primary race is already getting personal.
Less than a week after Rep. Joe Kennedy III launched his primary challenge, Sen. Ed Markey’s campaign is going on the offensive against the Massachusetts congressman over his fundraising history.
Kennedy pledged earlier this month that his campaign would no longer accept donations from corporate PACs and, in an interview over the weekend, criticized Markey for not making the same commitment.
“I don’t take corporate PAC money,” Kennedy told reporters. “Senator Markey does.”
Corporate PACs are business-backed political groups that raise and spend money to run political ads or directly donate to candidates, and they have become increasingly rejected by Democrats as a source of the disproportionate influence of money in politics.
The 73-year-old senator shot back forcefully on Thursday, releasing an online video that chronicled the series of corporate PAC donations Kennedy accepted in the run-up to his announcement and criticizing the 38-year-old congressman for being misleading.
“Congressman Kennedy is not being straight with the people of Massachusetts about corporate PAC contributions and his accusations in this race,” John Walsh, an adviser for Markey’s campaign, said in a statement. “People should take a look at the facts for themselves.”
According to a count by Markey’s campaign, Kennedy’s campaign committees have accepted $1.9 million from corporate PACs since his first campaign in 2012, including $41,000 this past June, the most recent month for which campaign finance data is available. In their video, Markey’s campaign overlayed a list of those June donations over footage of Kennedy’s recent interview.
Markey’s campaign also said the senator had quietly decided to stop accepting corporate PAC donations earlier this summer, prior to Kennedy getting in the race, even if they didn’t announce it at the time.
Kennedy’s campaign found the attack puzzling, noting that the congressman never hid the fact he had accepted corporate PAC money, but made the decision to stop after hearing “from an increasing number of constituents concerned about the outsized influence of corporate interests in our political system.”
“Yes, Joe previously accepted corporate PAC money,” Emily Kaufman, a spokeswoman for the Kennedy campaign, told Boston.com in a statement. “He took the No Corporate PAC pledge in early September, prior to entering the Senate race, after hearing from voters loud and clear about how important this issue was to them.”
In a race between two fellow prominent progressives with few major ideological differences, campaign finance has become the hot subject of the opening week.
After his official campaign launch, Kennedy challenged Markey and the two other lesser-known candidates in the race to take a “people’s pledge” discouraging outside groups from funneling money into the race. While the candidates agreed on the idea of limiting third-party spending, his opponents voiced skepticism about how the pledge might benefit Kennedy.
Since the 2012 election cycle, Markey’s campaign has accepted $1,457,364 in corporate PAC donations, according to Maplight, a group that tracks campaign donations. Kennedy’s campaign accepted $1,277,503 over that same time period.
Markey’s campaign didn’t immediately respond Thursday to questions about his plans to no longer take corporate PAC donations. The Malden native — who was first elected to Congress in 1976, before winning his Senate seat in 2013 — disavowed all PAC donations in 1984. However, as The Boston Globe reported in 2013, he reversed his position in 2003 while eyeing the Senate seat then held by John Kerry, who was running for president at the time.
End Citizens United, the group that has led the recent push to get Democrats to rejected corporate PACs, had been urging Markey’s campaign to take the pledge, according to communications director Patrick Burgwinkle. While the group welcomed the news that Markey had apparently joined Kennedy on the pledge to not take corporate PAC money, Burgwinkle expressed disappointment in the senator’s attack Thursday, which he said evoked a line of attack often used against Democrats by Republicans.
“If Senator Markey is also refusing corporate PAC money that’s another win for Massachusetts but we are disappointed in his Republican-style attack on Congressman Kennedy,” Burgwinkle said. “What matters to voters is doing the right thing and rejecting corporate PAC money is the right thing to do.”
