Reporting on the Massachusetts Senate race on Thursday, CNN's Brooke Baldwin played a Democratic card by noting the amount of Wall Street money Republican incumbent Scott Brown's campaign receives compared with his Democratic challenger Elizabeth Warren, who has campaigned as a populist opponent of Wall Street.
"The Center for Responsive Politics was reporting nearly 9 out of every 10 Wall Street dollars spent in the Massachusetts campaign here going to Brown. How is that playing, how will that play with voters there?" Baldwin asked her guest, after noting the "huge sea change" causing Warren's lead in the polls. She didn't ask about any of Brown's attacks on Warren, however. [Video below the break. Audio here.]
For instance, Baldwin could also have reported on Warren profiting not from Wall Street bankers, but Wall Street lawyers, "huge corporate-law firms" as National Review pointed out.
Or Baldwin could have noted Warren's embarrassing flub when it was discovered that she was listed as a minority professor with a Native American background despite being only 1/32nd Cherokee.
A transcript of the segment, which aired on October 25 on CNN Newsroom at 3:21 p.m. EDT, is as follows:
(...)
BALDWIN: And now for the sea change I talked about. Here's the latest poll of likely Massachusetts voters. You see here, this one now shows Warren leading Brown by five points, 48 percent to his 43. This is a complete turnaround from the poll taken just three weeks ago which gave Brown a four-point lead. So, what is happening today in Massachusetts? Let's find out. Let's go to straight to Boston to a reporter who's been covering this race from top to bottom, He is Andy Hiller with our Boston affiliate WHDH. Andy Hiller, welcome to you. You know, when you go from a four-point lead for one candidate to a five-point lead for the challenger, something's going on. What's happening there?
ANDY HILLER, reporter, WHDH: Well, there's a couple of things that's happening, and I'm certainly not going to deny that Elizabeth Warren is ahead. However, I would point out that the poll that you quote, the WBUR poll that was taken last month was a little bit outside all of the other polls. The truth is we're not seeing a big opening here. We're seeing a trend which we've seen really for months and the trend is to Elizabeth Warren and it is away from Scott Brown, and the poll today shows that and a lot of others poll show that, too.
BALDWIN: One part of this race, I know, is that the incumbent here, Senator Brown, he is getting Wall Street report. The Center for Responsive Politics was reporting nearly 9 out of every 10 Wall Street dollars spent in the Massachusetts campaign here going to Brown. How is that playing, how will that play with voters there?
HILLER: Well, there's a couple of things about campaign money. The first thing is Brown and Warren made a very unusual agreement, which was not to let any outside groups have any negative campaigning, so here in Massachusetts we have not seen all the super PAC ads for either one of them. In terms of money, and where it's coming from, they both criticize each other, but they both have more than enough money to make all of the messages on television that they want to, and I don't think anyone will say when this is over that money was an issue.
