The stunt is equal parts creepy and ridiculous. Sen. Kelly Ayotte, running in the Cigna/Elliot Corporate 5K road race in Manchester last week, was followed by runners holding cardboard Donald Trump masks up to their faces. The pursuers were not aligned with Ayotte’s challenger, Gov. Maggie Hassan, but volunteers with 350.org, a climate change group founded by environmentalist and writer Bill McKibben.
Video of the harassment tactic was posted on YouTube with the title, “Kelly Ayotte can’t run from her Trump problem.” As of Wednesday afternoon, it had fewer than 450 views.
You would think a group that claims to be “building a global climate movement” would try to stay on message, but if the Trump campaign has taught us anything at all it’s that negative attention is better than no attention at all. Oddly enough, McKibben himself is no fan of the kind of harassment his group resorted to in Manchester.
In an Aug. 5 opinion piece in the New York Times, McKibben railed against the similar tactics of a Republican opposition research group called America Rising. He wrote: “To be watched so much is a kind of never-ending nightmare. And sometimes it’s just infuriating. I skipped the funeral this summer of Patrick Sorrento, an important mentor to me at my college newspaper, because I didn’t want my minder to follow me and cause a distracting spectacle.”
Perhaps McKibben, listed as a senior adviser to the group, is not plugged into the day-to-day operations of 350.org, but one would think he has enough sway to influence the behavior of its minions.
And 350.org itself professes high ideals in the fight against climate change, stating on the website: “Climate change isn’t just an environmental issue, or a social justice issue, or an economic issue – it’s all of those at once. It’s one of the biggest challenges humanity has ever faced, and we’re going to have to work together to solve it. That means bringing people together – not just environmentalists, but students, business owners, faith groups, labor unions, universities and more – and building diverse coalitions.”
While we have on many occasions joined 350.org in sounding the alarm about climate change, harassing Ayotte in such a sophomoric manner hardly seems like the way to bring her or her supporters around on the issue. In fact, we’re hard-pressed to come up with a better way to undermine the effort.
Judy Reardon, a consultant to the state Democratic Party, is correct that these tactics “have been used now for several cycles” – by all sides – and she’s probably right, too, that they are not going to go away. But we also agree with her that the whole thing is lamentable. If voters and party leaders agree, now is a good time to send the message that enough is enough.
Perhaps it’s pie-in-the-sky, but we believe that if politicians and advocacy groups elevate their behavior, they will elevate the conversation. When that happens, democracy is strengthened and voters’ faith in their elected officials grows.
If you need to deploy people with Trump masks to get headlines, it means you have a big problem communicating your core message. Sure, 350.org got a front-page story and this editorial out of the deal, but it comes at the expense of the unity the group acknowledges is necessary to confront a problem of such great magnitude.
If an important message isn’t resonating with the public or elected officials, plan B shouldn’t be an unimaginative social media stunt that isn’t worth the time or effort.
After all, will anybody remember, if they ever even learned, who pulled it off and what they stand for? We doubt it.