GOP launches secret group to attack West Virginia coal baron
A generically named super PAC targets Republican Senate hopeful Don Blankenship, who recently served a year in prison.
By ALEX ISENSTADT 04/15/2018 01:23 PM EDT
The Republican establishment has launched an emergency intervention in the West Virginia Senate primary aimed at stopping recently imprisoned coal baron Don Blankenship from winning the party’s nomination.
Late last week, a newly-formed super PAC generically dubbed the “Mountain Families PAC” began airing TV ads targeting Blankenship, who spent one year behind bars following a deadly 2010 explosion at his Upper Big Branch Mine. The national party isn’t promoting its role in the group but its fingerprints are all over it.
The 30-second commercials, which the group is spending nearly $700,000 to air, accuse Blankenship’s company of contaminating drinking water by pumping “toxic coal slurry,” even as the multimillionaire installed a piping system that pumped clean water to his mansion.
“Isn’t there enough toxic sludge in Washington?” the narrator intones.
more + the commercial:
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/04/15/west-virginia-senate-blankenship-525094
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