Massachusetts Senate hopeful Rep. Ed Markey drew a comparison between the Supreme Court’s decision in the Citizens United case on campaign finance to the Dred Scott decision which upheld slavery.
Buzzfeed first reported the remarks, which Markey made at a campaign event Tuesday in Pittsfield, Mass. A video of the remarks was posted on YouTube.
“I want to go to the United States Senate in order to fight for a constitutional amendment to repeal Citizens United,” Markey said. “The whole idea that the Koch brothers, that Karl Rove can say, ‘we’re coming to Massachusetts, to any state of the union with undisclosed amounts of money,’ is a pollution, which must be changed.”
“The constitution must be amended,” he went on. “The Dred Scott decision had to be repealed, we have to repeal Citizens United.”
The Citizens United decision, made in 2010, dealt with campaign finance reform, ruling that parts of the McCain-Feingold Act regulating campaign spending by corporations violated the First Amendment.
In Dred Scott v. Sanford, the Supreme Court upheld slavery, when it ruled that a slave, Dred Scott, could not sue for his freedom because a black person “whose ancestors were imported into this country, and sold as slaves,” was not a citizen of the United States, and therefore not entitled to sue.
Markey is running for the Senate seat vacated by John Kerry last month, when he became secretary of state. He will face fellow member of Congress Stephen Lynch in the Democratic primary.