BOSTON -- Republican U.S. Senate candidate Jeff Beatty stepped up his attacks on U.S. Sen. John Kerry for his ties to AIG, the recently bailed out insurance group, calling on Common Cause, the nonpartisan government watchdog group, to examine Kerry's connections to AIG.

[img_assist|nid=168|title=Jeff Beatty (R-Harwich)|desc=|link=node|align=left|width=99|height=180]Beatty pointed to a statistic from the Center for Responsive Politics, another nonpartisan group that monitors money in politics, which shows that Kerry has received over $19 million in contributions from employees of the finance, insurance and real estate industries.

"This to me is a serious conflict of interest," Beatty, of Harwich, said at a press conference in the State House. "It is totally inappropriate. And it's just part of the big picture, the $19 million that Sen. Kerry has taken during his time in the Senate all the while he's on the committees that are supposed to be providing oversight."

Referring to Kerry as "senator cash and Kerry," Beatty said failed to provide proper oversight and instead looked out for himself.

"It's about a conflict of interest," Beatty said. "It seems that Sen. Kerry has been serving his own personal financial interest when he is out there backing up AIG. He seems to be taking care of his political interest and he seems to be taking care of special interest. I don't see where he is taking care of the interest of Massachusetts here."

Beatty also said Kerry should donate the $44,000 he has received in campaign contributions from employees of AIG to the Treasury so it can use it to pay for the bailout proposal that passed last week in Congress. He also reiterated his call for Kerry to sell the approximately $2 million he owns in AIG stock.

The Kerry campaign declined to comment for this story.

Beatty said he would have voted against the bailout proposal that Kerry supported and that both chambers of Congress passed last week.

"Kerry advocates for the bailout," Beatty said. "Why? Because it provides political cover. It's political cover that is trying to kick the can down the road to just hold things together and get us past the election. It doesn't provide recovery. It provides political cover. It's a sham."

The Republican said the bailout plan would cost every house hold in America $7,000.

Beatty did not present a proposal of how to reform the influence of money in politics. "I'm reforming it one senator at a time," he said.

Beatty said that he would be careful to avoid conflict of interests and that if someone raised an issue with any campaign contribution he received, he would return it.

Common Cause told PolitickerMA.com that they had not heard from the Beatty campaign and that Beatty's proposal was not exactly what they do. Pam Wilmot, the executive director of Common Cause of Massachusetts, said her organization doesn't typically look specifically into the relationship of one politician and one company, particularly in an election year. Her organization looks are larger issues and seeks to engage citizens and changing public policy.

"He sort of puts us in a category like a government agency, which we're not," Wilmot said. "We're not investigators on call."