A conservative group demanded an apology Tuesday from the leader of a prominent environmental group after its members wore Republican nominee Donald Trump masks while hounding a GOP lawmaker.
America Rising Squared (AR2) called members of 350 Action, an anti-fracking group co-founded by environmentalist Bill McKibben, “despicable.” They chased after Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte while she was running a 5K in New Hampshire.
They posted a video on YouTube titled, “Kelly Ayotte Can’t Run From Her Trump Problem,” along with a description reading: “350 Action made clear that Kelly Ayotte can’t support for a climate denying racist while pretending to be a ‘green’ candidate.”
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“It is reprehensible that Bill McKibben would send his left-wing activists to literally chase after Senator Ayotte wearing Donald Trump masks at last week’s race in Manchester,” Brian Rogers, executive director of AR2, said in a statement to reporters. “We demand that Mr. McKibben apologize to Senator Ayotte immediately.”
The group’s actions, and the demands for apology, come only a handful of days after McKibben wrote an editorial with The New York Times complaining about being chased around by conservative activists with cameras. He lamented the situation at the time, calling himself “under surveillance.”
“To be watched so much is a kind of never-ending nightmare. And sometimes it’s just infuriating. I skipped the funeral this summer of Patrick Sorrento, an important mentor to me at my college newspaper, because I didn’t want my minder to follow me and cause a distracting spectacle,” McKibben wrote.
Rogers told reporters that the entire incident is rather ironic, considering the group’s leader is on record lambasting activists tracking his political events.
“This episode proves how disingenuous and hypocritical Mr. McKibben really is – complaining about tracking his own public political events one day, and then videotaping his goons running after a United States Senator the next,” Rogers said.
The group maintains that activists on the ground, not McKibben, were calling the shots.
Dani Heffernan, the communication coordinator of 350 Action, said there is a difference between 350 Action’s tactics and those of AS2.
“There’s a big difference between America Rising Squared creepily stalking a private citizen like Bill and 350 Action student organizers engaging in some creative political theater to push a public official like Senator Ayotte,” she said in a statement to NH Journal.
Heffman added: “America Rising is more than welcome to get in the mix and engage in electoral politics with us —it’s the dark arts, cloak-and-dagger type stuff they do that crosses a line.”
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