WASHINGTON – National Democrats on Tuesday pulled down a controversial ad that tied a South Jersey congressional candidate to actions his former company took a year or more after he had left it.
The ad, launched Sunday, rebuked GOP candidate Tom MacArthur over how his former insurance servicing firm, York Risk Services, handled the claims of Phoenix firefighters injured on the job. Eight of them have sued York over insurance denials.
But MacArthur had sold the company and left it entirely in 2010 – nearly a year before York became involved with the firefighters. The MacArthur campaign had threatened a lawsuit over the ad, which had run on cable stations in the Burlington and Ocean County district.
"Today is a victory for the truth, and a devastating blow to the empty, dishonest campaign of my opponent, politician Aimee Belgard," MacArthur said in a news release. Belgard is a Burlington County freeholder.
A spokeswoman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which launched the ad, blamed the change on MacArthur's May financial disclosures – which shows income from York within the past two years. A MacArthur spokesman said the income was a result of the 2010 sale of the company, and had nothing to do with York's handling of the firefighters' claims.
Democrats had carefully worded the ad to say that MacArthur had profited from a company that denied firefighters' claims – implying that he was at fault without directly accusing him of having a role in the decisions.
"Nothing changes the fact that Tom MacArthur ran an insurance company that has been accused of cheating disaster victims and would have the wrong priorities in Congress," said DCCC spokeswoman Emily Bittner.
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