Mitch Perry
Mike Murphy says there is a “cynicism” behind the Marco Rubio campaign that he predicts will ultimately doom the Florida U.S. senator’s presidential candidacy.
“It’s cynical to run as the creature of new, fresh, while it’s all secret dark money,” Murphy tells reporter Sasha Issenberg in the second part of a lengthy interview in Bloomberg Politics posted Wednesday. Murphy, who heads Jeb Bush‘s super PAC Right to Rise, points out that the ads that aired this summer urging viewers to tell their senators to support Rubio were bought by the Conservative Solutions Project. It’s a 501(c)(4) nonprofit that’s not required to disclose its donors, hence the term “dark money.”
“It’s cynical to say, ‘I’m going to take the lead on defeating this horrible Iran deal that we all hate,’ and broadcast your ads to defeat that deal only on the Fox Network, where everybody is already against the deal, instead of running those ads on MSNBC to pressure Democratic senators that were the outcome to beating that deal,” Murphy said. “Cynically use it just to raise your name ID among Republican primary voters who already agree with you on the deal. There is a cynicism behind the young, fresh brand that I think is going to catch up with him.”
Conservative Solutions Project was established in 2014 with the express intent of supporting Rubio. Unlike a super PAC, it is not required by law to disclose its donors. That type of nonprofit proliferated after the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision opened the door to unlimited independent spending by corporations and unions.
Murphy takes a few other shots at Rubio in the interview, but also rips into the political press, whom he says has allowed Rubio to get away with running such ads and failed to question his record. He also says the media holds Bush to much greater scrutiny than they do the former Florida speaker of the House, who he says is getting the same coddling treatment that Barack Obama received in 2008.
“I don’t think the media understand: It’s $6 million, nobody’s done that with (c)(4) money. We think (c)(4)s are totally appropriate. We have one. We’re proud of it. But it’s basically been focused on policy research and things like that, not on television ads that are thinly disguised campaign ads. Rubio’s entire spend has been that so far, $6 million all secret donors. It kind of stuns me that he’s gotten away with that in the media.”
Although Bush is struggling in the polls (where he often placed third or fourth, trading back and forth with Rubio depending on the poll), some political observers refuse to write him off yet, mainly because of the huge dollars that Right to Rise was able to raise during the first part of 2015.
Murphy says that Right to Rise has aired two television ads comparing Bush to other candidates in the race, and says that “there are probably 20 in our production pipeline that have been already tested and are being tweaked and everything,” adding that “so it’s kind of like being an air traffic controller: You can see all the planes lined up that are going to land and I like our sequence a lot.”
