Scott Powers
There’s a certain awkward popularity associated with being a moderate and a wavering vote on a critical national bill.
Democratic Rep. Stephanie Murphy finds herself the target of attack ads from both the right and left now, facing a new six-figure advertising campaign from the League of Conservation Voters Friday urging a yes vote on the $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation package — which she had been leaning toward voting against.
The league’s ad is among several launched by Republican and conservative groups in the Orlando market, including a six-figure ad buy launched last week by the Republican ally American Action Network, urging Murphy to vote no.
The league’s ad, “Existential,” plays off Murphy’s own comments that she considers climate change to be an existential threat.
Murphy, of Winter Park, declared today she had concerns about spending and tax provisions in President Joe Biden‘s Build Back Better Act and she intended to vote no. However, she used opposition in the past as leverage to negotiate legislative changes from Democratic leadership — later voting yes on a previous procedural vote involving the budget, saying she received necessary concessions.
In her Sept. 15 statement announcing her opposition, Murphy noted that she did like much in the bill, including the “historic provisions to combat the existential threat of climate change.”
Then vote yes, the League of Conservation Voters’ ad urges.
The ad is slated to run for the next week in the Orlando market. The U.S. House of Representatives is expected to vote on the bill on or shortly after Oct. 1.
As the ad’s video shows Florida hurricanes, flooding, the Everglades, and solar panel farms, a narrator warns about how green energy programs funded in the bill could be for Florida.
“A clean energy plan that would be a huge win for Florida. Thousands of new jobs, critical to the fight against climate change. As Congresswoman Stephanie Murphy says: ‘Climate change is an existential threat for Florida, but it is also an opportunity to be seized.’ Congresswoman Murphy this is our chance. Let’s get it done,” the narrator says.
The Build Back Better package includes much of what Biden had proposed last spring in his $2 trillion climate resilience plan and in his $1.8 trillion American Families Plan, notably for what Democrats call “wraparound” health care, child care, education, and senior care services — which Republicans deride as socialist programs.
Under archaic and complex U.S. Senate rules, budget bills can avoid Senate filibusters through the budget reconciliation process. So Democrats, in control of both houses, could get the bill through without a single Republican vote. Democrats’ margins are slim, though; they’re already seeing critical votes teetering, such as from Murphy.
