Rachel Maddow: Scott Brown Claim I'm Running for Office Not True
In a full-page ad in the Boston Globe, talk show host Rachel Maddow criticized Massachusetts Republican Senator Scott Brown for falsely claiming she has been tapped as the state's Democratic candidate for the 2012 senate race.
"I never said I was running against Scott Brown. The Massachusetts Democratic Party never asked me to run against Scott Brown. It's just not true. Honestly. I swear. No, really," Maddow said in the open letter.
The ad was a response to a fundraising email sent by Brown earlier this week in which he claimed that the Massachusetts "political machine" was trying to recruit the "liberal MSNBC anchor" to run against him. Maddow said the rumor had no merit and that Brown "never even tried to find out if it was true."
"Some like Rachel Maddow. I'm sure she's a nice person -- I just don't think America can afford her liberal politics. Rachel Maddow has a nightly platform to push her far-left agenda," Brown said in the email.
Maddow accuses Brown of fear-mongering and using a bogus threat "to try to scare donors into giving him more money."
She writes: "Do you remember when Mitt Romney ran for President after being our Governor and he went around the country insulting Massachusetts, talking about what an awful state we are? To have our new Senator raising money around the country by saying how "terrible" one of his Massachusetts constituents is, kind of feels the same way to me."
In addition to calling Brown's loyalty to his home state into question, Maddow berated him for transforming into just another Washington conservative who invents "scary fake threats to run against."
As any good talk-show host would, Maddow ended the letter by challenging Scott Brown to appear on her show, something he has thus far refused to do. "Maybe he'll change his mind -- I hope he does," she wrote.
Brown adviser Eric Fehrnstrom e-mailed a response to the ad to Hotsheet.
"It was an open secret that the Democrats were trying to recruit Rachel
Maddow to run against Scott Brown in 2012," he said. "Now that she's said no, I'm
sure they'll scurry around looking for someone else. Maybe Keith
Olbermann's available."