So, Rep. Ed Markey seems to have violated his own pledge about outside campaign cash flowing into the Massachusetts special election to fill John Kerry’s vacant seat. Shoshana Weissmann at PolicyMic, a site that I also write for in my spare time, wrote yesterday that, “the ‘People’s Pledge‘ is ‘an agreement that imposes financial penalties on candidates any time an outside group runs a TV, radio, Internet, or mail advertisement on their behalf.” For Markey, there’s a ton of money coming to support him.
Alexandra Jaffe of the Hill reported on May 22 that:
Billionaire Tom Steyer is gearing up to engage in the Massachusetts Senate race yet again, a potentially pivotal development that Steyer and his aides hope will boost the Democratic nominee, Rep. Edward Markey, to a resounding win.
“NextGen, working with our local partners, will be seeking to be a politically disruptive force between now and Election Day,” reads the memo sent by Chris Lehane, a spokesman for Steyer’s NextGen super-PAC, to the PAC’s campaign team, and obtained exclusively by The Hill.
Steyer, a California billionaire and climate activist, spent $650,000 in attacks on Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) in the Democratic primary, despite the fact Markey remained the clear frontrunner in nearly every poll of the race. His attacks centered around Lynch’s support for construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, which Steyer opposes.
Yet, at the same time, Markey denounced Steyer’s support during the primary, but is now unavailable for comment concerning this recent development.
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