A left-leaning newspaper in New Hampshire called the public haranguing of a GOP lawmaker by a notorious anti-fracking group a “creepy and ridiculous” move that does nothing to help further its message.
The Concorde Monitor’s editorial board lambasted environmental group 350.org Thursday for stalking Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire at a 5k rally Aug.11 wearing Donald Trump masks.
The group, co-founded by environmentalist Bill McKibben, posted a video on YouTube after the incident 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.”
The video has received only 450 views as of Wednesday.
The newspaper’s editorial boards blanched at 350.org’s goofy tactics, despite being generally in favor of the group’s mission to bring awareness to the effects fossil fuels have on the environment.
“While we have on many occasions joined 350.org in sounding the alarm about climate change, harassing Ayotte in such a sophomoric manner hardly seems like the way to bring her or her supporters around on the issue,” the editorial board wrote. “In fact, we’re hard-pressed to come up with a better way to undermine the effort.”
The group’s decision to send Trump mask-wearing people to harass Ayotte, the editorial board wrote, only shows that 350.org has “a big problem communicating your core message.” Trolling the senator only eats into the efficacy of McKibben’s goal of divesting the Earth of fossil fuels, the paper added.
One GOP-affiliated group said the editorial indicates McKibben’s friends in the media are not warming to 350.org’s increasingly strange behavior.
“Even Bill McKibben’s left-wing allies recognize that his creepy stunt towards Senator Ayotte was reprehensible and has no place in New Hampshire,” Jeremy Adler, Communications Director, America Rising Squared (AR2), told The Daily Caller News Foundation.
He added: “Hopefully today’s editorial motivates him to heed our call from earlier this week, and do the right thing by apologizing to Senator Ayotte.”
AR2 called members of 350.org’s tactics “despicable” Wednesday and demanded McKibben apologize to Ayotte.
The odd actions 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.”
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