Two coal miners sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s potential Democratic challenger, Amy McGrath, asking her to take down a political ad featuring their images.
“Both Randy and Albrow were led to believe that the reenactment was being done for a documentary relating the work of the Black Lung Association. They did not know and were never told that they were being filmed for a political advertisement,” lawyers for Randy Robbins and Albrow Hall said in a letter Wednesday to McGrath’s campaign. “Randy and Albrow are not partisan political activists for either party. However, they are personally offended at seeing their images being used in a political attack ad that does not reflect their personal feelings or beliefs.”
The lawyer demanded the McGrath campaign “immediately cease and desist from the use of their personal images in any and all advertising and media.”
McGrath, 44, released an ad last month titled “10 Hour Bus Ride,” which accused McConnell of ignoring miners with black lung disease.
“All of the miners were fully informed that they were being filmed for an ad and even signed up for McGrath hats and T-shirts,” McGrath’s campaign manager Mark Nickolas told the Washington Free Beacon. The campaign said they had no plans of pulling the ad.
The miners’ lawyer disputed the campaign’s statement, saying, “My clients don’t recall signing any release, and certainly not one making reference to a political campaign.”
“They would not have participated had they been aware that the footage was to be used for a partisan ad,” he added.
The controversy is the latest in a rocky summer for McGrath’s campaign. Within her first week of announcing her campaign, the Kentucky Democrat flip-flopped on whether she would have supported the nomination of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. McGrath later canceled an appearance on MSNBC after struggling to explain to CNN’s Jake Tapper a comparison she made in 2017 between the President Trump’s election and 9/11.
