Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg is losing friends on the left over a recent ad campaign launched by his FWD.us group promoting immigration reform.
According to Politico, environmentalists and other progressive activists are furious because some of the TV ads put up by the group's subsidiaries also praise some lawmakers who support the Keystone XL pipeline and oil drilling platforms.
The ads support Democrat Mark Begich of Alaska and Republican Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, both of whom are up for re-election in 2014 and are involved in the debate over legislation to overhaul the immigration system.
“It’s great that Mark Zuckerberg is promoting immigration reform. Too bad he has to do so by echoing big oil’s agenda,” Daniel Weiss, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, told Politico.
CREDO Action, the activist arm of cellphone company CREDO Mobile, is reportedly planning a campaign of its own — on Facebook, no less — attacking Zuckerberg's ads.
“We want to start using Facebook as a way to make the connection about how political Mark Zuckerberg has become,” CREDO’s political director Becky Bond told Politico. She said the group has also launched a petition calling on FWD.us to stop its campaign.
“While your support and advocacy for comprehensive immigration reform is laudable, it should not come at the expense of the planet,” it reads.
The Sierra Club, for its part, has reportedly encouraged its members to share a note saying, “Zuckerberg promoting dirty fuels? DISLIKE.”
The FWD.us subsidiaries — Americans for a Conservative Direction and the Council for American Job Growth — released the ads last week, Politico reported. The groups defend the ads as a means of winning support for key candidates in the immigration debate.