Senator Schumer, under fire from free-market activist Stephen Moore and like-minded groups over his support of the “death tax,” will be the target of an upcoming advertising campaign in New York aimed at repealing the levy and stepping up constituent pressure on the state’s senior senator, Mr. Moore and other taxation opponents said yesterday.

The American Family Business Institute, in partnership with the recently formed Free Enterprise Fund – of which Mr. Moore is outgoing president – will announce today a series of 30-second television ads to run in the New York market starting within the next two weeks. The ads are part of a $7 million, 15-state campaign for repeal. The New York spots stress that Mr. Schumer has consistently opposed repeal of the estate tax, which its opponents label an unfair “double tax.” The levy requires heirs to pay taxes on assets that were already taxed while in the possession of their deceased benefactors.

The Free Enterprise Fund was established by Mr. Moore in January upon his departure from the Club for Growth, the free-market lobbying organization Mr. Moore cultivated into one of the country’s most effective political fund-raising groups. The institute boasts a membership of about 1,500 family business owners, who, according to the organization’s executive director, Dick Patten, make up the group most disproportionately harmed by the estate tax.

The tax is set to expire in 2010, but unless Congress intervenes to repeal it permanently, it will automatically go back into effect in 2011. According to Mr. Patten, Mr. Schumer is, in effect, telling senior citizens to “drop dead” in 2010 if they don’t want to see roughly half of their assets lost to the government.

Mr. Schumer’s purported hostility to senior citizens will be a theme of the advertising. According to a transcript of similar TV ads running in other states obtained by The New York Sun, the American Family Business Institute will allege that Mr. Schumer and other proponents of the tax are exploiting members of America’s “greatest generation.” The ads use a World War II hero, Donald Malarkey, to narrate the advertisement.

The ads, Mr. Patten said, “are a shot across the bow” directed toward Mr. Schumer and Senate Democrats. Last month, the House of Representatives voted to repeal the tax permanently, on a vote of 272-162. The fate of the levy is now in the hands of the Senate, which is expected to take up the legislation before Congress recesses in August.

The estate tax is an issue believed politically perilous for Senate Democrats, as polls demonstrate that a sizable majority of Americans support the levy’s repeal. The Senate’s minority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, asked Mr. Schumer to serve with him and Senator Baucus of Montana on an informal Democratic committee to try to broker a compromise with Republicans over the estate tax.

“Schumer is perhaps the most critical Senate Democrat in this fight,” Mr. Moore said. “He’s the head of that senatorial committee. He recognizes the political explosiveness of this issue. He doesn’t want to see more Democratic senators become the victims of this issue.”

Messrs. Moore and Patten pointed to the former Senate Democratic leader Thomas Daschle as an example. Before last year’s election, the American Family Business Institute waged a seven month campaign against Mr. Daschle over his support for the “death tax,” taking their message to South Dakota voters over TV, radio, and the Internet and through direct mailings. Mr. Patten said yesterday his group also called every household in the state to educate voters about the tax and to urge them to reject Mr. Daschle over his support for it. The Republican nominee, John Thune, seized on the estate tax as a campaign issue and narrowly defeated Mr. Daschle last November.

Mr. Moore said the estate tax was also a significant component of last year’s Republican senatorial victories in New Hampshire and South Carolina. Yet New York, he said, was one of the states most harmed by the estate tax, because of its preponderance of family-owned businesses and farms, making Mr. Schumer an important lobbying target.

A Schumer spokesman, Israel Klein, said: “I don’t think anyone, Republican or Democrat, expects the estate tax to be fully repealed.” Repeated calls to obtain further comment were not returned.

Generally, opponents of repealing the estate tax have said that it affects only the wealthiest Americans and that the government needs the revenues it raises.

The sponsor of the Senate legislation to repeal the estate tax permanently, Jeff Sessions, Republican of Alabama, agreed with Messrs. Moore and Patten that the tax is disproportionately harmful to privately owned businesses. Since personal assets are business assets in family-owned companies, placing heavy taxes on inherited wealth often imperils the businesses passed from one generation to the next, he said. Estate taxes often leave the heirs unable to afford to keep the company, Mr. Sessions said, forcing second-generation owners to sell or close the businesses.

Those burdens, Mr. Sessions said, are not shouldered by larger public companies, and thus the estate tax keeps family-owned businesses at a competitive disadvantage. He said he supports the efforts of Messrs. Moore and Patten in encouraging key Democrats to vote to repeal the tax.

“I think the Democratic Party can’t defend this tax as it presently exists, and I think maybe some of their members are actually evaluating what position they can take toward eliminating it,” he said.

New York, Mr. Moore said, is one of the “top six or seven states” in the country in terms of the number of family-owned businesses and farms adversely affected by the estate tax, the abolition of which “will be a huge tax relief for New Yorkers,” he said.

While Mr. Moore has helped plan and raise funds for the ad campaign as part of his leadership of the Free Enterprise Fund, his involvement with the organization will cease next week, he said. He is vacating the group’s presidency to become the senior economic writer for the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, he said, and will be replaced at the Free Enterprise Fund by Mallory Factor. Mr. Factor, along with Mr. Moore, was an organizer of the Monday Meeting, a biweekly, invitation-only gathering in Manhattan. The event features brief speeches by journalists, authors, and politicians, and typically attracts members of New York’s right-of-center community.

The Monday Meeting, to whose leadership Mr. Moore was named in January, will become a project of the Free Enterprise Fund under Mr. Factor’s leadership, Mr. Moore said.