Elizabeth Warren and Scott Brown Agree to Third-Party Ad Ban

Elizabeth Warren and Scott Brown have pledged to ban third-party ads from their Massachusetts Senate race.<a href="www.flickr.com/photos/shankbone/4596338617/sizes/z/in/photostream/">David Shankbone</a>/Flickr; <a href="http://flickr.com/link-to-source-image">Dexta32084</a>/Wikimedia Commons

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


On Monday morning, Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) and his likely Democratic opponent, Harvard Law School professor Elizabeth Warren, agreed to a pledge banning third-party advertisements in the run-up to November’s election. Groups like the League of Conservation Voters and Rethink PAC (attacking Brown) and Crossroads GPS (attacking Warren) had been waging a proxy war on the airwaves in Massachusetts since last fall, and with the inclusion of third-party ads, the race was expected to wind up in the $100 million range. Last week, Warren and Brown began hashing out a dark-money pledge (while hammering each other on the disagreements in public), and now, the Globe‘s Glen Johnson reports, they’ve reached a compromise.

The pledge for both candidates to denounce third-party ads run by supporters, ask TV stations not to air them (which TV stations don’t have to do), and—if the problem persists—Brown proposed that the candidate who benefits from the ads donate 50-percent of the total cost of the ad buy to charity (501(c)(3) political groups, presumably, don’t count).

Both sides obviously think they have something to gain from the agreement; Anti-Brown third-party groups have outspent the other side by a 3 to 1 margin so far, so you could see why he might want Warren’s outside groups to call off the dogs. Warren, likewise, is sick of being tarred—simultaneously—as a Wall Street shill and a radical occupier, and has to think that, this being deep-blue Massachusetts, she can win the race on her own if she runs close to a competent campaign. Besides, she raised $5.7 million in the last three months; money’s no issue.

Both campaigns are declaring victory, but will it really make a difference? In a statement, LCV Senior Vice President of Campaigns Navin Nayak said: “While we cannot take directions from any candidate on our independent activities, we are inclined to respect the People’s Pledge agreed to by Elizabeth Warren and Scott Brown and we hope that Scott Brown will honor his end of the deal when Crossroads and the Koch Brothers inevitably break it.”

Meanwhile, here’s the statement American Crossroads president Steven Law just blasted out on the agreement: “Because the agreement allows union phone banks, direct mail, and get-out-the-vote drives—all union core specialties—Warren’s latest agreement has loopholes the Teamsters could drive a truck through, the longshoremen could steer a ship through, the machinists could fly a plan through, and government unions could drive forklifts of paperwork through.”

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate