Coakley, Dems Jump On Brown Staffers Story

Last week, TPMDC reported that Massachusetts Senate candidate Scott Brown (R) is paying his campaign staff as "independent contractors," meaning they're responsible for paying their own payroll taxes and health insurance.

Brown's opponent, Martha Coakley (D), and other groups have jumped on the story, attacking Brown for not providing health insurance to his staffers.

"We already knew that Scott Brown didn't want to make health insurance more affordable for Massachusetts families and businesses. Now we learn that he won't even make health insurance available for his own staff. If he won't stand up for the people he employs, how could we ever trust him to stand up for us?" Coakley said in a statement.

Brown defended himself to the Boston Herald, saying, "The people who are working for me, they're happy." He also called the whole story a "silly issue."

"The small group working on the Scott Brown campaign either has existing insurance or were compensated sufficiently to purchase it on their own," said a Brown spokesman.

But that hasn't stopped Democrats from piling on. The Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee also responded.

"We already knew that Scott Brown would be a vote against health insurance reform in Washington -- putting his allegiance to the national Republican Party over his commitment to serve Massachusetts -- but now we know that Brown values his own personal ambitions above everything else, even his own staffers. Unbelievable," wrote the DNC.

"Scott Brown's stunning disregard for the people who work for him tells you all you need to know about Scott Brown. Brown has hoarded campaign funds to spend on misleading ads while leaving campaign staffers to fend for themselves," the DSCC wrote. "Scott Brown has put his own personal ambitions ahead of the well-being of the young people who serve him. There's one word to describe someone who spends millions on false attack ads instead of health care for workers: shameful."

The SEIU also released a statement:

"If Scott Brown won't even provide health coverage for the 20-year-olds working day and night on his campaign, why would he help Bay State families? Scott Brown cares more about doing the bidding of his extremist right-wing Tea Party and Wall Street backers then the men and women who wake up and go to work to keep America running every day," the union said in a statement.