A new super PAC hoping to highlight the outsize influence of money in politics unveiled Thursday an ad blitz that charges four Republican lawmakers with ignoring middle-class families in favor of special interests.
The $700,000 ad buy by Friends of Democracy is aimed at GOP Reps. Dan Lungren of California, Chip Cravaack of Minnesota, Sean Duffy of Wisconsin, and Charlie Bass of New Hampshire.
Titled "Get in the Game," the ad campaign will air for two weeks in each lawmaker's district, according to a news release.
In each 30-second spot, a lobbyist and a congressman, hobnobbing at a baseball game, tell a family that their seats are taken. As the family moves farther and farther away from the front row, they are told several more times that they can't sit there.
"Do you feel frozen out like this when it comes to Congress?" a narrator asks. "No wonder -- corporate lobbyists have your congressman's full attention."
The ads' targets are not random. Last year, for example, Bass was called one of the most corrupt members of Congress in an annual report by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, an independent watchdog group. One of the new ads accuses Bass of being too cozy with big oil, supporting billion-dollar taxpayer subsidies for the industry.
In the news release, Friends of Democracy co-founder Jonathan Soros vowed there will be a "political price to pay" when elected officials fail to bring their constituents' concerns to Washington.
"Americans have made it clear that they are fed up with being voiceless in the age of super PACs and mega-million-dollar donors," Soros said. "This frustration should be read as a warning for politicians as they head into the final stretch before the elections."
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