Two miners shown in a campaign ad for Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Amy McGrath have sent a cease-and-desist letter demanding the campaign stop using their images.
The ad, which McGrath launched August 23, featured a reenactment of a group of miners who made a 10 hour bus trip to Washington D.C. to ask U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to restore a higher tax on coal companies to help fund the federal Black Lung Disability Trust Fund. Some of the miners were disappointed that McConnell only spent a brief time with them.
Two of the miners who went on the trip and were featured in the ad, Randy Robbins and Albrow Hall, said through an attorney that they were led to believe the footage was being used for a documentary for the Black Lung Association and that they “did not know and were never told they were being filmed for a political advertisement.”
“They are personally offended at seeing their images being used in a political attack ad that does not reflect their personal feelings or beliefs,” their attorney, Christopher Thacker, wrote. “It is simply wrong for the McGrath Campaign to use individual miners suffering from black lung disease as political pawns without their permission or consent.”
The miners are shown for about four seconds as the camera pans through a bus traveling on a mountain road. The cease and desist letter says they were “shocked and outraged” when they saw the ad.
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The McGrath campaign said they have not officially received the letter but are reviewing the request. Terry Sebastian, McGrath’s spokesman, said all of the miners were informed that they were being filmed for an ad and could even sign up for McGrath hats and t-shirts. The ad was already scheduled to cycle off the air Thursday, he said.
McGrath announced her bid to run for U.S. Senate in early July, and despite the looming prospect of a competitive Democratic primary as Kentucky Sports Radio host Matt Jones considers running, she has gone straight after McConnell in television ads more than a year before the 2020 general election.
Her campaign highlighted the miners who traveled to D.C. just as another group of miners were getting national attention — several hundred Eastern Kentucky miners were stiffed on their final paychecks by Blackjewel LLC when the company declared bankruptcy.
Coal has long served as a political football in Kentucky, but has traditionally been used by the Republican Party to rail against environmental regulations as job losses from the mining industry devastated local economies.
McGrath visited the Blackjewel miners in Harlan County, as did one of her primary opponents, Mike Broihier from Lincoln County.
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Written by Daniel Desrochers. Cross-posted from the
Herald-Leader via the Kentucky Press News Service.