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<div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">===</div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.prwatch.org/news/2019/12/13517/gop-state-attorneys-general-fight-environmental-regulations-fossil-fuel-companies" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">https://www.prwatch.org/news/2019/12/13517/gop-state-attorneys-general-fight-environmental-regulations-fossil-fuel-companies</a></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">alex k</div><div style="font-size: small;">As Republican Attorneys General faced 2018 re-election bids and continued their legal challenges to Obama-era environmental regulations, fossil fuel companies poured millions of dollars into the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA), a political nonprofit that spends money to elect GOP AGs. That trend has continued into this year. From 2017 through mid-2019, oil, gas, and coal companies, trade associations, fossil fuel utilities, and industry executives donated over $6.7 million to RAGA, a CMD investigation has found. Fifty-five companies and trade groups and four executives made these donations.Giving the most money to RAGA since 2017 are oil and natural gas exploration company Noble Energy ($1,020,000), oil refining and materials conglomerate Koch Industries ($755,000), natural gas energy supplier NextEra Energy Resources ($500,855), and oil and gas drillers Anadarko Petroleum ($500,000) and PDC Energy ($350,000).RAGA's <a href="https://republicanags.com/2019/08/01/republican-attorneys-general-association-brings-in-groundbreaking-9-6-million-fundraising-haul-for-first-half-of-2019/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-shadow: rgb(204, 51, 51) 0px 3px 0px 0px; transition: all 500ms ease-in-out 0s;">$9.6 million</a> haul in the first half of 2019 dwarfs that of 2015, the last similar fundraising period. That amount includes contributions to RAGA’s related entities such as the Rule of Law Defense Fund, a 501(c)(4) dark-money group founded in 2014 and <a href="https://maplight.org/story/conservative-group-led-by-epa-chief-pruitt-received-dark-money-to-battle-environmental-regulations/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-shadow: rgb(204, 51, 51) 0px 3px 0px 0px; transition: all 500ms ease-in-out 0s;">funded</a> by Koch-linked political groups, the Edison Electric Institute, the Judicial Crisis Network, and the Federalist Society in past years.In addition to helping elect Republican candidates, the corporations' donations to RAGA score them personal meetings with GOP attorneys general. At four private events each year at luxury hotels, industry lobbyists, lawyers, and executives get exclusive access to the attorneys general, and the AGs have been happy to <a href="https://www.prwatch.org/news/2016/09/13136/RAGA-Clean-Power-Plan" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-shadow: rgb(204, 51, 51) 0px 3px 0px 0px; transition: all 500ms ease-in-out 0s;">oblige the corporations’ wishes</a>. Numerous GOP AGs have launched lawsuits attacking Obama-era environmental regulations such as the Clean Power Plan, the Clean Air Act, the Waters of the United States rule (WOTUS), and ozone caps.Other <a href="https://documented.net/2019/04/republican-attorneys-general-group-hosting-oil-and-gas-summit/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-shadow: rgb(204, 51, 51) 0px 3px 0px 0px; transition: all 500ms ease-in-out 0s;">perks</a> for annual RAGA donors include access to additional RAGA events, policy conference calls, monthly political briefings, passes to the annual Edmund Randolph Club retreats, and the option to pitch topics and be panelists at conferences. One RAGA event this year, in April, was an <a href="https://documented.net/2019/04/republican-attorneys-general-group-hosting-oil-and-gas-summit/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-shadow: rgb(204, 51, 51) 0px 3px 0px 0px; transition: all 500ms ease-in-out 0s;">oil and gas summit</a> to Houston.In some cases, oil and gas corporations extend their communications with attorneys general beyond RAGA events. For example, former Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt had secret meetings with industry lobbyists and challenged EPA regulations by sending letters to the agency that appeared to be written by Pruitt’s office but were actually <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/07/us/politics/energy-firms-in-secretive-alliance-with-attorneys-general.html?r=0" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-shadow: rgb(204, 51, 51) 0px 3px 0px 0px; transition: all 500ms ease-in-out 0s;">authored by lobbyists for oil and gas exploration company Devon Energy</a>. Pruitt filed 14 legal challenges to environmental regulations during his tenure as Oklahoma AG.CMD sued Pruitt for access to <a href="https://www.exposedbycmd.org/pruitt-emails-key-findings/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-shadow: rgb(204, 51, 51) 0px 3px 0px 0px; transition: all 500ms ease-in-out 0s;">thousands of emails</a> between Pruitt's office and energy interests and <a href="https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2017/02/07/lawsuit-filed-against-trump-nominee-pruitt-polluter-emails/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-shadow: rgb(204, 51, 51) 0px 3px 0px 0px; transition: all 500ms ease-in-out 0s;">sued to stop the emails' destruction</a>. The correspondence records led to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/02/22/oklahoma-attorney-generals-office-releases-7500-pages-of-emails-between-scott-pruitt-and-fossil-fuel-industry/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-shadow: rgb(204, 51, 51) 0px 3px 0px 0px; transition: all 500ms ease-in-out 0s;">national coverage</a> of Pruitt's close relationships with Devon Energy, the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers trade association, the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity, and other industry interests.Pruitt became Trump's director of the EPA in 2017, but his fellow Republican AGs continue to fight Obama's environmental regulations in the courts, buoyed by election support from RAGA.In early 2017, as Democratic AGs began to sue the Trump administration, RAGA ramped up its electoral operation, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-politics-republican-ags-exclusive-idUSKBN16Z1A5" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-shadow: rgb(204, 51, 51) 0px 3px 0px 0px; transition: all 500ms ease-in-out 0s;">ending a longstanding agreement</a> with its Democratic counterpart to refrain from targeting the other party's incumbent AGs.<h2 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 2em; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; word-spacing: 3.6px;">Arizona</h2>In the 2018 Arizona elections, Republican Attorney General Mark Brnovich faced a Democratic challenger, and voters weighed in on a ballot measure to require utility companies to generate 50 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2030. Brnovich ran against the measure and was buoyed byPinnacle West Capital--the holding company that owns Arizona Public Service, the state's largest public utility--which gave $200,000 to RAGA in the 2018 election cycle. Pinnacle West PAC also donated $7,000 to the Brnovich campaign, and CEO Don Brandt gave $2,500.RAGA put nearly $3.7 million into Arizona state elections in the 2018 cycle, giving $2.9 million to Arizona for Freedom PAC, which spent most of that on ads, and over $750,000 to the RAGA Arizona PAC, which transferred the money to the state Republican Party.Democratic challenger January Contreras had backing from the Democratic Attorneys General Association and the Tom Steyer-linked outside group Clean Energy for a Healthy Arizona, which spent several million dollars supporting her, but she lost a close race to Brnovich.Far more expensive was the ballot measure campaign, the <a href="https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/elections/2018/10/16/arizona-clean-energy-ballot-measure-proposition-127-most-expensive-state-history/1660198002/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-shadow: rgb(204, 51, 51) 0px 3px 0px 0px; transition: all 500ms ease-in-out 0s;">most costly</a> in Arizona's history. Pinnacle West poured $32.3 million into political group Arizonans for Affordable Electricity, which campaigned against the measure, and Clean Energy for a Healthy Arizona, financed mostly by Steyer's NextGen Climate Action, spent $24 million in favor. The measure lost by a big margin.In 2015, Brnovich and Arizona Public Service <a href="https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/arizona-officially-sues-epa-over-clean-power-plan-7772833" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-shadow: rgb(204, 51, 51) 0px 3px 0px 0px; transition: all 500ms ease-in-out 0s;">joined</a> the multi-state lawsuit against Obama's Clean Power Plan. After Trump was elected, in late 2016, Brnovich joined 23 other states in a letter urging the new president-elect to withdraw the Clean Power Plan.Also in 2015, Brnovich <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/258343-five-states-sue-over-ozone-rule" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-shadow: rgb(204, 51, 51) 0px 3px 0px 0px; transition: all 500ms ease-in-out 0s;">led a coalition</a> in suing the EPA over restrictions on ozone, which coal company Murray Energy had also legally challenged.<h2 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 2em; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; word-spacing: 3.6px;">Colorado</h2></div>