Attack ad stirs furor in S. Jersey congressional race

WASHINGTON - Democrats' latest attack on a South Jersey Republican congressional candidate takes him to task for a legal dispute that pulled in his former insurance company - a year after he left it.

The attack ad, produced by national Democrats, prompted a threat of a lawsuit Monday and a demand that it be pulled off TV.

The campaign fight hinges on a television ad the Washington-based Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) began running on cable Sunday hammering Tom MacArthur, the Republican in a surprisingly close House race against Democrat Aimee Belgard. They are competing to replace retiring U.S. Rep. Jon Runyan (R., N.J.) in a district encompassing much of Burlington and Ocean Counties.

On Monday, MacArthur's attorneys wrote to Comcast Corp. urging the cable company to pull the ad. A MacArthur statement called it "a reckless and despicable smear with absolutely no basis in truth."

MacArthur spokesman Chris Russell said in an interview: "If this ad doesn't come down by the end of the day, there's going to be a lawsuit."

About 7:30 p.m. Monday, a Comcast spokeswoman said there had been no decision to pull the ad.

The DCCC, which sees this race as one of its best chances in the country to pick up a GOP-held seat, declined Monday to speak on the record about facts that would justify the ad. Spokeswoman Emily Bittner wrote in an e-mail: "There is no question that Tom MacArthur profited from a company that denied claims of injured firefighters."

The 30-second TV spot attacking MacArthur is based on a lawsuit eight Phoenix firefighters filed in 2013 against York Risk Services. York is the insurance service firm MacArthur founded, ran, and then sold for around $500 million in December 2010.

The firefighters argue that York improperly denied claims for injuries they suffered on the job. One of the plaintiffs died of colon cancer - possibly, the suit says, because of chemicals she was exposed to on the job; another was injured when a roof collapsed during a fire.

But the claims in the suit were initially handled by Avizent, a separate company that York acquired in December 2011 - nearly a year after MacArthur sold York and gave up any role in the company.

The firefighters also dispute York's actions in the case, but MacArthur had left by the time the company became involved, according to his campaign.

MacArthur stepped down as York chief executive in April 2009 and left the firm in December 2010, giving up his role as chairman, his campaign said.

The claims in the suit were all filed either after MacArthur left York or while Avizent was handling the firefighters' insurance.

Russell, MacArthur's spokesman, said Democrats were attacking him for actions by a company he had already left.

The Democratic ad says MacArthur "profited from a company that denied claims of injured fire fighters."

It features a man identified only as a Phoenix fire captain named John, who tells the camera: "My brother and sister firefighters had to take Tom MacArthur's company to court over all of these denied claims. They shouldn't have made their money hurting guys like me."

The plaintiffs in the suit do not include anyone named "John."

As the ad points to MacArthur's profits, the fine print on screen cites his May financial disclosure form, in which the candidate reported "residual stock option income" from his 2010 sale of York. The disclosure is required for income of $5,000 or more from the last two years, though the amount MacArthur received is not specified.

MacArthur's campaign said the payment resulted from activities before he sold the firm and was not related to York's handling of the firefighters' claims.

A spokeswoman for Belgard, a Burlington County freeholder, declined to comment on the ad or say whether the candidate would call for it to be taken down.

"It's not our ad; we can't control it," spokeswoman Hannah Ledford said. "It's illegal for us to try to coordinate" with the DCCC.

MacArthur accused Belgard of "hiding," saying in a statement that the Democrat "should have the courage and decency" to disavow the ad "and call on her cronies in Washington to take it down." He said failure to do so would prove that Belgard is "willing to trade her principles and her ethics for a seat in Congress."

The firefighters' attorney on Monday said that so far, he had no information tying MacArthur to the handling of their claims.

"I don't know that his name has come up in any of the documents" disclosed so far, said the lawyer, Michael Doyle, though he added that he had been wrangling with York for more information higher up the corporate chain.

"I don't know when [MacArthur] stepped down, but I can tell you that their corporate culture created a lot of harm among the first responders in Phoenix at least," Doyle said in an interview.

MacArthur's campaign has previously said York did not make any more or less money based on how it processed claims for its clients.

The DCCC has heavily invested in helping Belgard. But so-called "independent expenditures" ads like this one are, by law, required to be made separately from the campaigns in the race, without coordination.

Such spending is a now-common way for national parties to launch broadsides while local candidates claim to keep their hands clean. In 2012, for example, national Republicans used tangential connections to tie a Bucks County Democratic challenger, Kathy Boockvar, to convicted cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal. Boockvar lost to U.S. Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick (R., Pa.).

In South Jersey, the firefighter attack is the third DCCC ad to draw attention to MacArthur and his past role in the York company as Democrats paint the former North Jersey mayor as a wealthy, out-of-touch outsider.

The committee's first ad in this race also drew sharp criticism: It cited lawsuits against York, while MacArthur was still there, in which victims of wildfires and hurricanes in Texas and California said their claims were wrongly denied.

The ad featured images of wreckage from Hurricane Sandy, in which MacArthur had no role as an insurer. Each of the lawsuits cited was settled without any admission of wrongdoing.