It’s become a standard trope of Republicans. They accuse their Democratic opponents of depending on support from a left-wing “Hollywood elite” that is out of touch with regular folks.
So it was with Sixth District MAGA Congressman Ben Cline, in a recent interview with NBC29, discussing his Democratic challenger in the November election: journalist and author Beth Macy.
“She has Hollywood support on her side,” Cline said. “She’s been able to raise more money than I have. And that’s OK. She can have Hollywood. I’ll take the voters of the Sixth District on my side.”
Now the facts:
Macy served as an executive producer and co-writer for the Hulu series “Dopesick,” about the role of big pharmaceutical companies in creating the opioid crisis that has ravaged Appalachia, based on her 2018 bestselling nonfiction book.
Macy made sure Appalachian communities were portrayed honestly and without stereotypes.
After Macy announced her candidacy for Congress last year, she was endorsed by actor Michael Keaton, who had a leading role in “Dopesick.” In the endorsement, Keaton, who lost a nephew to addiction, refers to the massive defunding of Medicaid, which Cline supported.
As for Hollywood: The “Dopesick” series was not filmed there, but largely in Clifton Forge, Covington and surrounding Alleghany County. They are part of the Sixth District currently represented by Cline. The location filming provided more of an economic boost to those communities than anything Cline has done since he entered Congress in 2019. As a producer, Macy lobbied hard for the filming to be done in Virginia.
But here’s the irony: It is Cline, not Macy, who has benefited from the largesse of “Hollywood.”
If we define “Hollywood” as the entertainment industry, Hollywood’s political action committees have donated at least $21,000 to Cline’s campaigns since 2018.
Here’s the evidence from the Cline campaign’s filings with the Federal Election Commission:
(Disney is the parent company of Hulu, which broadcast “Dopesick.”)
Beth Macy’s congressional campaign has received thousands of donations, most of them small, but none from the entertainment industry PACs — or any other corporate PACs, for that matter.
Unlike Cline, who has received hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations from corporate PACs, Macy refuses to accept them.
For many years, Cline took campaign donations from Abbott Laboratories, which sent representatives into small towns like Clifton Forge and Covington to sell the lie that Oxycontin wasn’t addictive.
So which candidate is the favorite of big money — including big Hollywood money?
Hint: It’s not Beth Macy.
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