The campaign of Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) is stepping up its push to get the Republican candidate, businessman Gabriel Gomez, to sign a pledge agreeing to keep negative ads paid for by outside groups out of the race. On Friday, Markey’s campaign manager, Sarah Benzing, sent a letter to her counterpart on the Gomez campaign, Jill Neunaber, asking them to commit to signing the “People’s Pledge,” an agreement to stop third-party groups from buying ads supporting either of the candidates.
“As campaign manager for Ed Markey for Senate, I write you today to formally ask that Gabriel Gomez sign the attached People’s Pledge to limit undisclosed, outside money in the Senate special election,” Benzing wrote.
The “People’s Pledge” first appeared in the 2012 Massachusetts race between Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and former Republican Senator Scott Brown. It was proposed by Brown.
“Gabriel Gomez is claiming to be “a new kind of Republican.” but by refusing to sign the People’s Pledge, after having been a spokesman for a secretly-funded special interest group that spent half a million dollars attacking` President Obama in 2012, he isn’t acting like one,” Benzing wrote, referring to Gomez’s involvement with Special Operations OPSEC Education Fund. That group, with extensive ties to the Republican Party, launched in 2012 to attack President Barack Obama for taking credit for the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. Many of those who took a public role in the group were former Navy SEALS, including Gomez.
Gomez has declined to sign the “People’s Pledge.” Asked to respond to the letter from the Markey campaign Friday, Will Ritter, a spokesman for Gomez, referred TPM to a statement Gomez released Thursday that described Markey’s operation as a “mudslinging campaign.”
Update: Gomez sent a response to Markey Friday evening.
Read the full letter from the Markey campaign to the Gomez campaign below.