Submitted by Anne Landman on
MSNBC TV talk show host and Massachusetts resident Rachel Maddow took out a full page ad in the Boston Globe saying that Republican Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown fabricated a rumor that she may be running against him for Senate in 2012 in order to raise funds. Brown sent a fundraising email around the country in which he claims that the "political machine in Massachusetts" is recruiting "liberal MSNBC anchor" Maddow to run against him for senator in 2012. Immediately after that claim, Brown writes, "The political season never ends, which is why I need your continued support." In her ad, Maddow says she is not running against Brown, that the Massachusetts Democratic Party never asked her to run against Brown, and the claim they had solicited her to run is untrue. Maddow writes, "Scott Brown never even tried to find out if it was true before using the made-up threat of me running against him, to try and scare donors into giving him more money." Maddow says Brown is participating in the now "standard" conservative strategy to "invent scary fake threats to run against," like the "made-up death panels in health reform or the fake controversy about the president's birth certificate." She took exception to Brown's effort "to smear one of his constituents to raise money out-of-state."