Senator Patty Murray has always coasted to victory in past elections. As a Democrat in leftist Washington, she has powerful friends among the state’s corporate juggernauts, including Starbucks, The Seattle Times, and the Seattle Seahawks.
This election, she’s actually in a tight race against Republican nurse and entrepreneur Tiffany Smiley. The political newcomer came out of nowhere to challenge the radical leftist who is attempting to enter her fourth decade in power. It helps Smiley that Democrat policies have turned Seattle and much of Washington into cesspools of horrible policies and decimated economic conditions.
The three aforementioned corporate heavyweights, all of whom are known to use their clout to quash anyone who represents the best interests of the people instead of the elitists’ desires, have gone after Smiley with petty complaints that they would never level against Murray if she did the same thing. In fact, she HAS done the same thing. More on that in the article below from WSJ. First, let’s look at one of the campaign ads they corporate juggernauts want quashed:
Tiffany Smiley, a Republican candidate for US Senate for Washington state, received cease & desist letters from @Starbucks & the @seattletimes for this political ad where she stands in front of a Starbucks & features headlines from the liberal newspaper. pic.twitter.com/Meo86tfco5
— Andy Ngô 🏳️🌈 (@MrAndyNgo) October 1, 2022
Now, let’s look at the WSJ report on what Smiley has been going through in her quest to help Washington citizens and disseminate the truth that the corporate giants want buried…
Corporate Dirty Pool in Washington’s Senate Race
Tiffany Smiley, Patty Murray’s rival, gets nastygrams from Starbucks, the Seattle Times and the Seahawks.
How worried are Democrats about Washington Sen. Patty Murray’s re-election? Bothered enough that Seattle’s corporate heavyweights are playing dirty pool on her behalf.
After coasting for five terms, the progressive Ms. Murray is facing a surprisingly spirited challenge from Tiffany Smiley, a nurse and entrepreneur. The Republican is pummeling Ms. Murray from every direction and laying out her own detailed reform agenda. While the RealClearPolitics average has Ms. Murray winning by 8 points, one recent poll put Ms. Smiley within 2. It’s close enough that Majority Leader Chuck Schumer recently transferred $500,000 of his own campaign cash to Ms. Murray’s campaign.
And close enough that a trio of titans—Starbucks, the Seattle Times and the Seattle Seahawks—are actively attempting to sabotage the Smiley campaign, albeit in a distinctly underhanded fashion. Their targets are two effective Smiley campaign ads.
In “Game Day,” the Republican is in a kitchen preparing to watch a football game, hitting Ms. Murray and Democrats for the spiraling cost of food. In “Cup of Coffee,” she stands in front of a derelict building. Barely visible at the top, and seen backward, is the store’s faded Starbucks sign. Ms. Smiley hits Ms. Murray for rising crime, while the ad flashes two Seattle Times headlines, one of which reads: “Starbucks to Close 5 Seattle Stores Over Safety Concerns.”
“Game Day” hit the airwaves Sept 1. Five days later, according to documents I obtained, the Smiley campaign received a terse email from the Seahawks claiming a trademark violation. The ad briefly shows Ms. Smiley’s husband, Scotty—a retired U.S. Army Ranger who was blinded by shrapnel in Iraq—expressing alarm that “even beer” prices are rising. You only see his shoulders above a tall couch—and if you get a magnifying glass you might make out a letter or two from the word “Seahawks.” The letter insisted the Smiley campaign “immediately cease” its “unauthorized commercial use.” Nothing like your local sports franchise dumping cease-and-desist orders on wounded veterans.
“Cup of Coffee” went live on Sept. 20. The next day, the Seattle Times sent an email to the “Jane Smiley” campaign—apparently without running it past its fact-checking desk—accusing it of “unauthorized use of The Seattle Times logo and two headlines” in violation of the paper’s “copyright and trademark.” It demanded the campaign remove any references to the paper not only in its own ad, but in an NBC News article about the ad’s launch.
Two days later, Starbucks sent a certified letter saying the campaign was appropriating its intellectual property, and complaining it might “create an unfounded association in the minds of consumers between Starbucks and your campaign.” It insisted the campaign either pull the ad or alter it to strip both the (barely visible, backward) sign and the Seattle Times headline referencing Starbucks.
One such letter may be the product of an overzealous lawyer, but three in a row looks like more than a coincidence. One might even wonder if some Murray staffer was putting bugs in Seattle business leaders’ ears. And while corporate political-action committees routinely play politics by making donations, it’s something else for individual companies to go to bat for a candidate via behind-the-scenes threats based on tenuous legal claims. These letters were bound to cost the Smiley campaign money and headaches and might have pushed it off the airwaves.
The campaign didn’t roll over. It made a painless accommodation to the “Game Day” ad, blurring the jersey colors to obscure anything distinct. In a legal letter sent Thursday to Starbucks, the campaign rebutted the company’s infringement claims, running through political speech protections and noting that no reasonable person would ever think a factual ad about shuttered Starbucks stores amounted to a coffee-chain endorsement. It suggested Starbucks focus on its own problems, like its recent union woes.
The Seattle Times also received a letter refuting its claims, but it got something in addition. The Smiley campaign on Thursday filed a Federal Election Commission complaint, charging the paper with providing the Murray campaign a prohibited in-kind contribution. It turns out that Ms. Murray has also used a Seattle Times headline in her ads. Her “First 2016 Ad” sports the newspaper’s logo under the headline: “Patty Murray’s and Paul Ryan’s Teamwork Is a Model for Congress.” It seems the Times has a different legal standard for candidates it endorses.
As the FEC complaint notes, the Smiley campaign would have to spend an estimated $5,000 to remove and update the ad—“costs that Patty Murray does not have to accrue.” It cites FEC regulations that provide “if a corporation makes its resources available for free, it must do so for all candidates.”
Don’t expect the Seattle corporate set to do anything on behalf of Ms. Smiley soon. But it shouldn’t be too much to ask that they do their politicking straight—and out in the open.
Corporate juggernauts in Seattle are so indebted to Patty Murray and Democrat policies that keep them enriched that they’ll do anything money can buy to stop Tiffany Smiley. The truth can wake Washingtonians up, so the elites want it kept under wraps.
The cheaters want us to believe it’s a tight race. Then their cheating won’t look so obvious. The races aren’t tight at all. We, the people, are finished with the Joe and Barry clown show.