N.Y. Times editorial board against Tax Rip-off bill...

N.Y. Times editorial board issues rare call to action to oppose GOP tax bill

By CRISTIANO LIMA

The New York Times editorial board openly urged voters to contact their congressional representatives to express opposition to the Senate GOP tax reform bill on Wednesday, a rare move by one of the most prominent editorial boards in the country.

"This morning, The New York Times Editorial Board is tweeting here to urge the Senate to reject a tax bill that hurts the middle class & the nation's fiscal health," the board wrote on The New York Times opinion section's official Twitter account.

The @nytopinion account's Twitter bio was changed to say the editorial board was "temporarily taking over" the platform.

In a series of tweets, the account listed the phone numbers for the congressional offices of several key Republican senators in the ongoing debate over the GOP tax bill. They included Sens. Jeff Flake and John McCain of Arizona, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Bob Corker of Tennessee, James Lankford of Oklahoma and Jerry Moran of Kansas.

The seven lawmakers are considered to be persuadable votes in the GOP's effort to overhaul the tax code, though some in the group have indicated they will support the bill.

It was not immediately clear whether The New York Times editorial board, which is separate from the news division, has ever directly called on constituents to oppose a bill by listing the phone numbers for their representatives. But the move signaled a rare call to action by the group, which has grown increasingly antagonistic to Republican efforts on tax reform.

In an editorial published Tuesday, the opinion writers blasted the "enormously unpopular tax bill" which "lavishes benefits on corporations and wealthy families."

"Republican senators have a choice. They can follow the will of their donors and vote to take money from the middle class and give it to the wealthiest people in the world. Or they can vote no, to protect the public and the financial health of the government. There’s no compromise on that," the editorial board wrote.

A representative for The Times told POLITICO on Wednesday that the editorial board's actions weren't substantively different from its everyday work, but that the social media takeover was mostly an attempt to expand its efforts onto a different platform.

"The Editorial Board has been writing for weeks about concerns over the tax legislation pending in Congress," senior vice president of communications Eileen Murphy said in a statement. "This was an experiment in using a different platform to get that message out. We emphasized to our audience that this was the position of the Editorial Board in particular, not of Times Opinion generally."