For Immediate Release
Tuesday, August 23, 2016
Contact: Adam Bozzi, [email protected]
Campaign finance reform group End Citizens United (ECU) is launching a grassroots action today targeting Senator Kelly Ayotte.
ECU members in New Hampshire will participate in a call-in campaign urging Ayotte to side with the overwhelming majority of Americans who support overturning the Supreme Court’s misguidedCitizens United decision. Ayotte has stood staunchly with the special interests who support the status quo.
“End Citizens United is once again taking action in New Hampshire to hold Senator Ayotte accountable for siding with the special interests, who are spending millions on her campaign, and against New Hampshire families,” said Tiffany Muller, End Citizens United Executive Director. “It’s bad enough she’s voting against the well-being of middle class New Hampshirites, but her opposition to popular, common-sense reforms to reverse Citizens United makes it even more difficult for the rest of us to have our voices heard. Getting Senator Ayotte to side with New Hampshire families shouldn’t be this hard.”
A recent poll commissioned by End Citizens United found that nationwide, 73 percent of voters have an unfavorable opinion of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, compared to just 18 percent who favor it. Independent voters see reducing the influence of special interest money in government and politics as a top priority, ranking only behind protecting America from terrorism and creating jobs and increasing incomes.
Despite overwhelming support for the overturn of Citizens United, Ayotte has resisted attempts by reformers to clean up the system. She’s voted against a constitutional amendment that would have overturned Citizens United, which corporate special interests use to spend unlimited money to support her. She’s also voted three times to allow political donors to shield their identities.
Further, Ayotte has taken over $585,000 from the insurance industry and has voted to end Medicare as we know it by replacing it with a voucher system that would create huge profits for insurers. She has taken $416,000 from big oil and voted to protect their massive tax breaks. And she’s sided with the billionaire Koch brothers more than 80 percent of the time, and benefited as their groups spent over $1 million attacking Maggie Hassan.
Last week, ECU launched a new ad in New Hampshire in which all of the people speaking in the ad are grassroots members of End Citizens United. Today’s action complements the ad, demonstrating that ECU will continue its efforts in the air and on the ground to hold Ayotte accountable.
End Citizens United PAC was established in March 2015 to counter the disastrous effects of Citizens United and reform our campaign finance system. To date, more than 1.5 million grassroots members from every state and territory have taken action to support End Citizens United.
Read more on ECU from the San Francisco Chronicle: End Citizens United Aggressively Seeks Campaign Finance Reform.