Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is accused in a new ad of hypocrisy when it comes to decrying the influence of billionaire donors in politics.
The gist of the campaign: Reid is obsessed with attacking wealthy conservative donors, but doesn’t seem to mind billionaire contributors to liberal causes.
The conservative group American Commitment — which is connected to libertarian millionaires Charles and David Koch — announced Monday that it will run ads tying Reid, the Nevada Democrat, to liberal billionaire Tom Steyer.
“The hypocrisy of Harry Reid disparaging successful Americans on the floor of the U.S. Senate, while he helps Democratic senators collect campaign contributions from shadowy, dirty energy billionaires is astonishing,” Phil Kerpen, the president of American Commitment, said in a statement. “If Harry Reid believes anything he says, he should stand up to the Steyer brothers and help the American people by supporting the Keystone Pipeline and opposing new energy taxes that only benefit special interests.”
A spokesman for the group told The Daily Caller that the $50,000 ad campaign will run online starting Tuesday in battleground Senate states like Louisiana, North Carolina, Arkansas and Michigan. These states are places where the Democratic Senate Majority super PAC is attacking the billionaire Kochs for pouring money into groups that are running ads against liberals.
The 60-second “Steyer Infection” ad says points out that “billionaires like Tom Steyer … just hosted Reid and other Senate Democrats at his San Francisco mansion.”
“Now Steyer wants Harry Reid’s help to kill the Keystone Pipeline and impose huge, new energy taxes to hurt our economy,” the ad’s narrator says. “That’s why Tom Steyer and his brother Jim are spending millions to finance campaigns that support liberals who will keep Harry Reid in charge of the Senate.”