'I don’t think there’s anything more offensive,' Gomez says of Markey's ad. | AP Photo, Reuters | AP Photos Gomez calls Markey 'pond scum'

Massachusetts GOP Senate candidate Gabriel Gomez called his opponent, longtime Rep. Ed Markey, “pond scum” during an interview with an NPR reporter on Thursday.

“I don’t think there’s anything more offensive,” Gomez said, according to a YouTube clip of the exchange, which took place after an event at a local Chamber of Commerce. “You know I’ve got four young kids, and they gotta sit there and gotta see an ad with their dad — who served honorably, talk to anybody I served with — whether as a pilot or as a SEAL, anybody I worked with. And for him to be as dirty and low, pond scum, like to put me up next to bin Laden, he’s just gotta be called what he is. It’s that simple.”


Gomez was asked about an ad his campaign released earlier this week accusing Markey of comparing Gomez to Osama bin Laden in a Web video by juxtaposing images of the two.

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“After spending the past week leveling completely baseless attacks against Ed Markey that were thoroughly debunked by Massachusetts newspapers and nonpartisan fact checkers, Gabriel Gomez has reached a new low,” Markey spokesman Andrew Zucker said. “Unfortunately for Gomez, his desperate attack will do nothing to distract from his opposition to an assault weapons ban and limits on high-capacity magazines, or his refusal to release his 2005 tax return that would reveal how much he pocketed from taking a questionable $280,000 tax break on his Cohasset home.”

Markey has healthy leads in most of the recent polls of the race.

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The Democrat isn’t alone among members of Congress in being compared to pond scum. Last month, Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) acknowledged his declining approval ratings meant his popularity was “somewhere just below pond scum.”