Despite campaigning on overturning Citizen’s United and fighting Super PACs’ influence, Patrick Murphy is refusing to put his money where his mouth is – literally – and continuing to accept Super PAC cash.Murphy, whose father has contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to Super PACs that supported his congressional campaigns, is now rejecting calls from his Democratic base to keep Super PACs out of his Senate primary race.
Murphy is using anti-Super PAC rhetoric on the campaign trail but has refused to sign the “People’s Pledge” championed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren to keep Super PACs out of the race. The TCPalm pointed out Murphy’s hypocrisy:
U.S. Rep. Patrick Murphy refused to try to keep big-money groups at bay in his U.S. Senate Democratic primary against U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson.
Although Murphy has said he opposes the political influence of Super PACs and outside groups that can raise unlimited amounts of cash, he rejected Grayson’s proposal this month to agree to something like the “People’s Pledge” that largely kept Super PACs from running ads in a 2012 Massachusetts Senate race. Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Republican opponent Scott Brown agreed that whenever a third-party group ran an ad that benefitted them, they’d donate half the ad’s cost to charity, therefore coercing groups to not get involved.
If Murphy wants to win the trust of voters, he shouldn’t pander to progressives about Citizens United while holding his hand out to Super PACs’ dark money.