Attack ads to target Dems, Markey

With the ink barely dry on the sweeping global-warming bill that passed the House last week, Republicans on Wednesday launched an ad campaign targeting Rep. Betsy Markey and 13 other Democrats.

The attack is a sign of how poorly the GOP believes the legislation will play in moderate districts in the West, Midwest and South. And it underscores a 2010 electoral strategy in which the GOP is likely to focus heavily on retaking former Republican districts that swung blue in the Obama wave.

“We’re going to keep looking at the unemployment rate and utility costs in the next couple of months, and as those continue to rise, we’re going to continue to ask her where are the jobs she promised,” said Joanna Burgos, a spokeswoman for the National Republican Congressional Committee who said thousands of Markey’s constituents in the 4th Congressional District would be receiving robocalls over several days.

Ads blast cap and trade

Burgos called Markey one of the committee’s “top targets,” though the ads running in Colorado are significantly less expensive than the TV or radio ads aimed at other high-profile targets, including Rep. Thomas Perriello, D-Va.

The telephone ads blast the so-called cap-and-trade provision of the bill as “the largest tax in American history” because of some studies that suggest it could cost the average family several thousand dollars a year.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said the cost would be less than $200 a year, and then only once the toughest limits on carbon-dioxide emissions kick in in 2020.

Jobs cited in defending bill

Markey, a freshman congresswoman from Fort Collins, has defended the bill as likely to create far more jobs in Colorado than it costs, in part because the state is well-placed to benefit from a shift toward renewable energy mandated in the legislation.

“A lot of the venture-capital money that is coming into the renewable-energy field is coming to states like ours,” Anne Caprara, Markey’s chief of staff, said Wednesday.

“When you start hearing from folks saying, ‘I’m looking to locate a new company and I want to place it in Fort Collins or Larimer County,’ it shifts your perspective on things.”
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