Ed Markey’s passive aggressive campaign

Ed Markey’s passive aggressive campaign

Democratic Congressman Ed Markey apparently is hoping that being super-liberal in Massachusetts is enough to defeat Republican Gabriel Gomez in the Special Election … and granted, it might be.

So Markey is in hiding:

While Republican Gabriel E. Gomez held nine public events this week, his Democratic rival, Edward J. Markey, held none, sparking criticism from Gomez that the veteran congressman is ignoring voters and avoiding the public eye.

“He’s been hiding,” Gomez said Friday, during a stop at Mul’s Diner in South Boston….

But Markey’s lack of public events with voters means he runs the risk of appearing to repeat the mistakes of Attorney General Martha Coakley, who was accused of running a lackluster campaign and snubbing voters before her loss to Scott Brown in the 2010 special Senate election.

Markey also is playing hide and seek with his tax returns:

After days of requests from reporters and his GOP opponent, Democrat US Representative Edward J. Markey said he will release his tax returns “in the very near future” to match the financial disclosure provided by his rival in the US Senate campaign, Republican Gabriel E. Gomez.

“I’m going to go back as far as he did and I’m going to release my tax returns,” Markey said on WCVB-TV’s On the Record. Gomez has released six years’ worth of returns.

But he still declined to commit to a day for their release saying only that he would provide them, “in the very near future.”

But this passive campaign contrasts with Markey’s aggressive pejorative advertising.

Markey ran an attack ad earlier this month that tried to negatively influence Massachusetts voters by placing images of Gomez, a former US Navy SEAL, side by side with Osama bin Laden.  Now he’s exploiting the Newtown tragedy to try and smear his opponent.

In Markey’s latest attack ad, a narrator reads the following while juxtaposing Gomez’s face beside a pile of bullets:

“Gomez is against banning assault weapons.  And Gomez is against banning high capacity magazines, like the ones used in the Newtown school shooting.”

Gomez publicly denounced the ad, and chided Markey for a tactic he described as “sick.”

“First, Congressman Markey slandered me by comparing me to Osama bin Laden. Now in his most recent TV ad, Markey blames me for the horrific Newtown shooting,” Gomez said.

“I guess after 37 years in Congress you lose your sense of decency. Exploiting a tragedy for political gain is sick.”

“I am the father of four children, who, like every person in America, was horrified by the shootings in Newtown.  I served as a US Navy SEAL who knows firsthand what happens when bad people get access to guns.”

“The only gun measure before Congress is the Toomey-Manchin proposal for expanded background checks which, just as I do, Congressman Markey supports,” said Gomez.

Meanwhile, as the nation is focused on the recent IRS scandal and expressing legitimate concerns about how the IRS will enforce Obamacare, SEIU, the nation’s most notable union of health care workers, is spending more than $340,000 to support Markey.  (Not that SEIU would care much about the IRS issue themselves, given that they were sure to obtain waivers to exempt themselves from a key provision in the health care law).

But these aren’t surprising antics from Markey.  Really, what more could we expect from a Washington insider of more than three decades?  When he’s not taking credit for the technological advances of the world, the man once nicknamed “Rep Nanny” by his local newspaper would rather call concerns about Benghazi a “bogus theory.”

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