A throng of business owners stood in support of U.S. Senate candidate Mike McFadden on Monday to counterattack an advertisement by his Democratic opponent, Sen. Al Franken, that alleges McFadden's company was involved in a job-killing business deal.
While McFadden traveled the state on Monday, his colleagues took to his defense, including Paul Grangaard, CEO of Allen Edmonds Shoe Co., and Robin Engelson, former managing director at Lazard Middle Market, who now is managing partner of Sapphire Financial. Engelson called the ad "intentional manipulation to stir up emotion."
Said Engelson: "I want to make a few things perfectly clear. One: Mike McFadden has never shipped a single job overseas. Two: He has never inverted a company to help avoid paying U.S. taxes. Three: His company, Lazard Middle Market, is based in the United States and pays United States taxes. And four: Mike McFadden has never closed a single plant or laid off a single worker."
McFadden and his campaign have repeatedly disputed Franken's latest ad, which features workers laid off after the 2009 shuttering of a Montana mill following the restructuring of Smurfit-Stone Container Corp. The ad links the closing to McFadden's company, Lazard Middle Market. McFadden has taken a leave of absence from his role as CEO of the company during his U.S. Senate bid. He also launched a counterattack Monday in his own ad that said Franken's attacks were evidence that "typical politicians don't have a clue about jobs."
McFadden maintains that not only was his Lazard Middle Market not involved in the transaction, but that his firm and its parent company have no control over operational decisions.
A campaign spokesman said McFadden ran Lazard Middle Market, while the company responsible for the Smurfit layoffs was Lazard Middle Market's parent company, Lazard Frères. The issue also was raised during Sunday's heated debate.
The Franken campaign pointed out that the Smurfit-Stone deal was mentioned on Lazard Middle Market's website until the ad's debut, and then scrubbed from the site. McFadden's campaign has maintained it doesn't know why the business deal was mentioned there or why it was removed. The deal is still mentioned on the parent company's website.
Franken spokeswoman Alexandra Fetissoff said in a statement that McFadden was trying to "distract from the fact that his company worked on a deal that resulted in more than 400 workers losing their jobs."
Engleson said the company's mention may have been on Lazard Middle Market's website to show it as an area of expertise, "but again, that expertise is with the restructuring of debt, not with restructuring operations."
No Lazard Middle Market representatives were present at Monday's news conference.
A spokeswoman for the company declined to comment on the record.
"The company itself is going to have to speak for itself," McFadden campaign manager Carl Kuhl said.
On Lazard Middle Market's website, a disclaimer reads that "References to 'Lazard' include Lazard Frères & Co. LLC, Lazard Middle Market LLC, and other subsidiaries of Lazard Ltd."
The ad is among others that has drawn McFadden's ire, including an 18-month-old Web ad by the Alliance for a Better Minnesota that features video of McFadden's daughter Molly — taken from a McFadden ad — and paints him as "Just another rich guy who likes to fire people." That ad was not commissioned by the Franken campaign.
Kuhl said that McFadden has run a positive campaign and that advertisements lambasting Franken for voting with President Obama 97 percent of the time are "factually based on Sen. Franken's record. Period."
"We're not running any negative personal advertising. We're not going after Senator Franken's character," Kuhl said. "We're talking about Senator Franken's record."
Abby Simons • 651-925-5043
