loparo
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[### Who's behind Ohioans for Energy Security's ad campaign ...
Energy and Policy Institute
https://energyandpolicy.org › ohioans-for-energy-secur...](https://energyandpolicy.org/ohioans-for-energy-security/)
Aug 28, 2019 — Ohioans for Energy Security's ads are brought to you by the same people who supported the controversial bailout of FirstEnergy Solutions.
Who’s behind Ohioans for Energy Security’s ad campaign to scare voters?
August 28, 2019
Ohioans for Energy Security, a new entity blanketing Ohio with a wave of television ads defending the bailout of FirstEnergy Solutions, is brought to you by the same people who campaigned for the controversial bailout plan.
The group formed last month in Ohio as a for-profit Limited Liability Corporation. It just launched a $1 million ad campaign designed to scare voters away from signing petitions to place a referendum on House Bill 6 on the 2020 ballot. The bill in question, passed by the Ohio General Assembly and signed by Governor Mike DeWine in July, will force Ohio consumers to pay to bail out uncompetitive nuclear and coal plants in Ohio. It also rolls back Ohio’s life-and-money saving clean energy standards, which helped to support 112,000 jobs in the Buckeye State.
“In the coming weeks, don’t give your information to the Chinese government,” Ohioans for Energy Security tells visitors to its website. “Don’t sign their petition allowing China control over Ohio.”
*Ohioans for Energy Security’s website tells voters to call its hotline to report petition gatherers. Petition signatures for statewide referendums aresubmitted to the Ohio Secretary of State and Attorney General, not the Chinese government.
Ohioans for Energy Security points to several reports that the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China has been among the banks that financed several new gas projects in Ohio developed by Clean Energy Future, a company that opposed HB 6.
The Columbus Dispatch reviewed those reports and concluded that “the group behind the commercial offered no evidence that such a plot exists.” It didn’t find “any evidence that the Chinese government intends to play a role in the possible repeal of House Bill 6.”
The Cleveland Scene writes that the group’s “bonkers” first ad “continues with even less tenuous grasps on the issues surrounding HB 6.”
Ohioans for Energy Security doesn’t mention that the broad-based opposition to HB 6 includes consumer advocates, environmentalists, free market groups, health experts, and manufacturers, as a quick review of opponent testimony on the bill will show.
The pro-bailout group also doesn’t mention Securities and Exchange Commission filings that show the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China has committed many millions of dollars to FirstEnergy Corp., the parent company that spawned FES. A March 2018 declaration by Charles Moore, FES’s chief restructuring officer, also included the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China on a list of “interest parties and significant creditors” in FES’s bankruptcy case, under the subheading “Banks, Lenders, UCC Lien.”
One of the Ohioans for Energy Security ads that blanketed Ohio
Ohioans for Energy Security is led by the spokesperson for another pro-bailout group backed by FirstEnergy Solutions
Carlo Loparo is listed as the president of Ohioans for Energy Security on political issue ad disclosures on file with the Federal Communications Commission. Loparo also serves as the group’s public spokesperson.
Loparo is also the spokesperson for the Ohio Clean Energy Jobs Alliance (OCEJA), a coalition “powered by FirstEnergy Solutions” that launched last fall with the help of the utility’s outside lobbyists and public relations consultants, and campaigned in support of HB 6.
Loparo is the president of the Columbus-based Loparo Public Relations, and boasts 25 years of experience in “media relations, strategic message development and crisis communications,” according to his firm’s website.
Amy Natoce, the vice president of Loparo Public Relations, was the political director for Dave Yost’s successful campaign for Ohio Attorney General. Yost will soon decide on whether to approve of revised summary language for the referendum petition, a first step toward getting the referendum on the ballot in 2020. Attorneys representing FES and Generation Now, Inc., a dark money group that spent millions on ads supporting HB 6, have been targeting Yost’s office with letters opposing the effort to put the issue on the ballot.
Ohioans for Energy Security’s first ad uses stock footage, features employees of FirstEnergy Solutions
“Don’t sign your name to a plan that kills Ohio jobs, harms Ohio communities, and endangers our energy independence,”
tells viewers as stoic headshots of several individuals flash on screen.
The ad doesn’t identify those individuals, but at least three of the individuals appear to be recycled from stock footage that had previously been used in a 2017 Ohio ballot initiative ad around prescription drug prices.
Image from 2017 prescription drug ballot initiative ad
Image from 2019 Ohioans for Energy Security ad
Image from 2017 prescription drug ballot initiative ad
Image from 2019 Ohioans for Energy Security ad
The 2017 ad which used the same stock photos, called “Step Forward,” no longer appears online, though Ballotpedia references it in a database of ads from the 2017 prescription drug initiative campaign. A copy was provided to the Energy and Policy Institute.
That 2017 ad was funded by “Ohio Taxpayers for Lower Drug Prices,” which employed Rex Elsass, a Republican operative and the owner of Strategic Group for Media.
Some of Ohioans for Energy Security’s ad contracts on file with the FCC name as the buyer Strategic Media Placement, also owned by Elsass. The same firm made ad buys for Generation Now.
The Ohionans for Energy Security ad also includes several employees of FirstEnergy Solutions who also appeared in earlier ads supporting HB 6, produced by the dark money group Generation Now, Inc. Some also appeared in
produced by the FES-backed Ohio Clean Energy Jobs Alliance.
*A screenshot of a Generation Now Facebook ad featuring Matt Messenger, who the ad did not not disclose is a project manager at FES’s Perry nuclear power plant.
*Ohioans for Energy Security first ad features a similar image of Messenger, without disclosing his name or employer
Back in June, the Energy and Policy Institute asked a spokesperson for FES at Sitrick and Company why the utility’s employees were appearing in Generation Now’s ads, and if it was funding the group’s efforts. The spokesperson said he would “be happy to look into this and get back to you,” but then never responded with any further information.
A monthly fee statement filed in FES’s bankruptcy case later revealed that Sitrick & Company staff discussed EPI’s inquiry with “D. Griffing” and the “Dewey Square” team. David Griffing is the vice president of government affairs for FES. The Dewey Square Group is a lobbying firm that has received nearly $800,000 for its work on FES’s bailout campaigns in Ohio and Pennsylvania, which included work on the launch and operations of the Ohio Clean Energy Jobs Alliance.
Excerpt from Sitrick & Company’s filing in FES’s bankruptcy case discussing EPI’s inquiry regarding FES employees working with Generation Now
Links to Generation Now’s ad firm and a pro-Householder PAC backed by Murray Energy
The server for the group’s website – www.ohioansforenergysecurity.com – also hosts the websites of Elsass’s Strategy Group Company and Front Porch Strategies.
It also hosts a site – LarryHouseholderFightsforus.com – supporting Ohio’s Republican House Speaker Larry Householder, whose rise to the speakership was backed by FirstEnergy and Generation Now. Householder then led the drive to pass HB 6. The pro-Householder site is paid for by the Michigan-based Hardworking Americans Committee, which spent over $450,000 on ads opposing Householder’s Republican primary opponent Kevin Black in 2018.
Federal Elections Commission data shows the Hardworking Americans Committee received $50,000 in 2018 from the PAC of Murray Energy, a coal producer that stands to benefit from HB 6.
The Hardworking Americans also received $50,000 that year from Political Education Patterns, the PAC for the Cleveland-based International Union of Operating Engineers Local 18. IUOE Local 18 doled out $295,000 to Generation Now in 2018 and 2019, according to FEC data. Mark A. Totman, the union’s VP, serves as one of Governor Dewine’s appointees to the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio Nominating Council, where he represents organized labor.
Updatedat 7:30 ET on Aug. 28, 2019 to include information about Ohioans for Energy Security’s use of stock footage in its ad.
carlo loparocoal bailoutfirstenergy solutionsgeneration now inchb 6larry householderloparo public relationsnuclear bailoutohio clean energy jobs allianceo
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https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-09-03/ohio-energy-bailout-supporters-turn-to-china-conspiracy-theory
ex wsj, invest banker
BloombergOpinion
entity dubbing itself “Ohioans For Energy Security” has a warning for the good people of the Buckeye State:
The Chinese government is quietly invading our American electric grid; intertwining themselves financially in our energy infrastructure.
Before we get into the details of the one-minute ad in which a suitably ominous voice intones those words over much footage of President Xi Jinping, some context: Ohio recently passed legislation to subsidize struggling nuclear and coal-fired power plants, while also weakening incentives for renewable power and energy efficiency. The law benefits several incumbent power companies, especially FirstEnergy Solutions Corp., the bankrupt merchant-generation arm of utility FirstEnergy Corp. In response, opponents are busy gathering signatures for a petition to put a referendum aimed at scrapping the law on the November 2020 ballot.
The ad warns Ohioans about such people approaching them to sign. And while the ad doesn’t go on to say this, I think I am duty-bound to point out that those clipboard carriers will not necessarily be sporting identifying markers like Chinese-flag lapel pins or tee-shirts proclaiming “XI LOVES YOU!”
As my Bloomberg News colleague Will Wade reports, Carlo LoParo, a spokesperson for OFES, explained that state-controlled Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Ltd. has loaned money to several natural-gas-fired power projects in Ohio. Therefore, as those plants gain market share, so Beijing could gain undue influence over the state’s power system.
Having rejected “compelling,” I’m struggling to find a word that adequately captures the class of logic on display there. Suffice it to say that loans made to power plants by a bank, state-owned or otherwise, do not actually grant that bank or its shareholders ownership of said plants, let alone influence over the grid they supply. Finance and power-market oversight just doesn’t work that way.
LoParo runs a local public relations firm and previously worked on behalf of a group funded by FirstEnergy Solutions that promulgated the bailout legislation 1 . He says the ad was “produced in a way to get your attention,” and I can only agree with him on that. When asked how exactly a bank loan would translate to undue influence over the grid, things got a little fuzzier, and he said we just don’t know the terms of the financing. Not knowing would seem like a good reason to hold off airing inflammatory insinuations — especially as loans don’t grant equity-like control — but maybe that’s just me.
I also asked LoParo how OFES feels about Industrial and Commercial Bank of China’s role as a lender to none other than FirstEnergy itself. An amended agreement from last October attached to the parent company’s last 10-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission lists the Chinese bank as part of a 23-strong syndicate providing a $2.5 billion credit line to FirstEnergy and several of its subsidiaries.
Here’s the thing: That also doesn’t give ICBC any control of FirstEnergy’s operations in Ohio’s power market. But by the comically tortured logic of the OFES ad, surely having a Chinese bank provide credit to the actual owner of the grid presents a similarly sinister challenge? LoParo actually said he would “prefer” FirstEnergy not to take such funding. (A spokesperson told me the company isn’t associated with OFES and doesn’t plan on changing its lending banks.)
Indeed, in response to a broader question, he said he would prefer any public or quasi-public Ohio infrastructure project not to take funding from banks controlled by foreign governments. That sounds like a great way to increase the cost of just about everything for Ohioans. One wonders if OFES plans on also going after the federal government over the small issue of who owns all those U.S. Treasuries.
As an abattoir of reason, the ad at least comports with the spirit of this bailout. Consider representative William Seitz, a co-sponsor of the law, who declared years ago that when it comes to renewable energy, Ohio’s legislature wouldn’t continue its “march up state mandate mountain.” But now that the mountain happens to be made of coal and uranium, he has scrabbled up with gusto.
In its vilification of sinister outside forces, the ad displays a certain despicable cunning. It recasts local energy supply as being about other, national hot-button issues promulgated by President Donald Trump, who carried the state in 2016. We have seen this already, of course, not least in Energy Secretary Rick Perry’s attempt to force through subsidies for coal and nuclear plants on national-security grounds. The Chinese link, tenuous as it is, stokes fear and attempts to connect the prior decade’s decline in manufacturing employment — not confined to Ohio by any means — to the job losses that result from unprofitable old power plants closing.
This use of labor issues is an extension of Trump’s pledge to coal miners and seems likely to be weaponized more and more as our energy system changes. Faced with implacable forces of falling costs for newer technologies and rising concern about climate change, rallying support for struggling incumbents on the basis of protecting jobs can be a potent populist tactic.
On this front, there is a grim irony to be found in the fact that FirstEnergy Solutions’ emergence from chapter 11 has been delayed due to a dispute with unions about honoring existing collective bargaining agreements. Just as Trump’s love for coal miners has done little to revive their sector, the Ohio state legislature’s subsidies for struggling older plants represent a losing strategy (except for the asset owners). Plus, like OFES’s seeming preference for financial autarky, such subsidies raise costs for everyone, including manufacturers. If folks are worried about interference in Ohio’s grid, they should forget Beijing and start with Columbus.
With assistance from Margaret Newkirk
He told Wade he has had no interaction with that group on this campaign.
}:
To contact the author of this story: Liam Denning atldenning1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Mark Gongloff at mgongloff1@bloomberg.net
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Analysis
Ohio’s Great Chinese Power Conspiracy Theory
PORTSMOUTH, OH - OCTOBER 13: A local supporter holds up a sign in support of the Ohio coal industry as Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney spoke to a crowd at Shawnee State University on October 13, 2012 in Portsmouth, Ohio. The Romney and Obama campaigns have been concentrating their efforts on Ohio to gain more supporters as Election Day approaches. (Photo by Ty Wright/Getty Images) (Photographer: Ty Wright/Getty Images North America/Photographer: Ty Wright/Getty Im)
PORTSMOUTH, OH - OCTOBER 13: A local supporter holds up a sign in support of the Ohio coal industry as Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney spoke to a crowd at Shawnee State University on October 13, 2012 in Portsmouth, Ohio. The Romney and Obama campaigns have been concentrating their efforts on Ohio to gain more supporters as Election Day approaches. (Photo by Ty Wright/Getty Images) (Photographer: Ty Wright/Getty Images North America/Photographer: Ty Wright/Getty Im)
By Liam Denning | Bloomberg
:{September 4, 2019
An entity dubbing itself “Ohioans For Energy Security” has a warning for the good people of the Buckeye State:
The Chinese government is quietly invading our American electric grid; intertwining themselves financially in our energy infrastructure.
Before we get into the details of the one-minute ad in which a suitably ominous voice intones those words over much footage of President Xi Jinping, some context: Ohio recently passed legislation to subsidize struggling nuclear and coal-fired power plants, while also weakening incentives for renewable power and energy efficiency. The law benefits several incumbent power companies, especially FirstEnergy Solutions Corp., the bankrupt merchant-generation arm of utility FirstEnergy Corp. In response, opponents are busy gathering signatures for a petition to put a referendum aimed at scrapping the law on the November 2020 ballot.
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https://energynews.us/2019/09/23/midwest/whos-behind-the-chinese-conspiracy-ads-against-ohios-nuclear-referendum/}:
ohio law lets political action groups keep funders secret during drive to let voters get a say on nuclear subsidies.
The video ad starts like a horror film trailer.
“They” are “coming for our energy jobs. The Chinese government is quietly invading our American electric grid.”
Troops march in Tiananmen Square and Chinese President Xi Jinping appears as the announcer’s deep voice speaks.
“Don’t sign the petition allowing China to control Ohio’s power.”
The ads have circulated in recent weeks along with a massive print and mail campaign, all attempting to undercut a potential referendum on FirstEnergy power plant subsidies.
The ads imply that signing the petition would give voters’ personal information to the Chinese government — a conspiracy theory that has been substantially debunked.
Yet questions remain about where the money is coming from to fund both the petition drive for a public vote on FirstEnergy’s subsidies and the inflammatory campaign against it by a group called Ohioans for Energy Security.
“The group operates largely in the shadows in terms of their funding,” Dave Anderson, policy and communications manager for the Energy and Policy Institute, said of Ohioans for Energy Security.
Here’s what’s known so far — and what’s not known.
Ohioans for Energy Security is aggressively campaigning against a petition effort to put the state’s nuclear bailout law to a public vote.
The ads aim to prevent a referendum on a new law, House Bill 6, which will add charges to electric customers’ bills to subsidize nuclear and coal plants while gutting the state’s clean energy standards.
Ohio lawmakers passed the law in July, and a group called Ohioans Against Corporate Bailouts began working on a referendum initiative soon after. Ohioans’ right to seek a referendum on legislation is guaranteed by Article II of the state’s Constitution.
On Aug. 30, the group got a go-ahead from the Ohio secretary of state to start collecting signatures for the referendum petition. Supporters need to collect approximately 266,000 signatures to get the issue on the ballot next year.
Even before that approval came, Ohioans for Energy Security began its aggressive ads aiming to keep voters from getting a say on the bill’s coal and nuclear bailouts.
And less than a week later, FirstEnergy’s bankrupt generation subsidiary, FirstEnergy Solutions, filed a lawsuit asking the Ohio Supreme Court to stop the referendum petition effort. FirstEnergy Solutions stands to lose roughly $900 million in subsidies for its nuclear plants if voters eventually reject HB 6.
Ohio campaign finance laws let Ohioans for Energy Security keep its funding sources secret during the petition drive.
It’s not clear who’s behind Ohioans for Energy Security, and the group isn’t required to disclose the funders for any of its anti-referendum ads during the petition drive. The group has filed incorporation papers with the Ohio Secretary of State, which serve to limit its legal liability under state law.
Those papers, filed on July 30, show attorney Donald Brey as the sole “authorized representative.” Patrick Pickett signed on behalf of statutory agent IW Agent, LLC. Pickett and Brey are both partners at the Isaac Wiles law firm in Columbus, which shares its business address with IW Agent.
The group’s lawyers won’t answer questions about its funding.
Brey, Pickett and their partner Mark Weaver did not answer the Energy News Network’s questions about who pays for the firm’s services for Ohioans for Energy Security. The lawyers likewise declined to identify the officers, directors and shareholders of the corporation.
The firm’s lawyers “cannot ethically discuss information within the attorney-client privilege,” Weaver replied via email.
“We have not and do not represent FirstEnergy,” Weaver also said. “We do represent a wide range of political action committees and non-profit organizations that are independent associations with First Amendment freedom of speech rights.”
Weaver’s email did not make any statement about whether it had represented FirstEnergy Solutions. People and companies have also sometimes paid for attorney fees or expert expenses in legal matters where a lawyer technically represents other individuals or entities.
The firm had acted as outside counsel for the Office of the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel in a case seeking refunds forunlawful overcharges by FirstEnergy utilities for renewable energy credits that they had bought from their affiliate, FirstEnergy Solutions. That past representation “presents no legal ethics issues with respect to our current representation of any political action committee or non-profit organization,” Weaver said.
Public records reveal associations between the anti-referendum group’s spokesperson and another group with connections to FirstEnergy Solutions.
Public relations for Ohioans for Energy Security are being handled by Carlo LoParoat LoParo Public Relations in Columbus. LoParo did not respond to questions from Energy News Network about the identity of the funders for Ohioans for Energy Security and his client contacts for that organization.
LoParo has also acted as spokesperson for the Ohio Clean Energy Jobs Alliance.The group’s website describes it as a “coalition of Ohio community leaders and organizations committed to preserving the jobs, economic benefits, carbon-free energy and electricity grid reliability” of nuclear energy. The group ran ads in favor of the nuclear and coal subsidy bill, House Bill 6, when it was pending in the legislature.
“Powered by FirstEnergy Solutions,” says a note at the bottom of the alliance’s home page, though it does not provide details about what that means.
LoParo has told the Energy and Policy Institute that the Dewey Square Group lobbying firm had acted “on behalf of FES [FirstEnergy Solutions] and the Ohio Clean Energy Jobs Alliance to advocate for keeping the state’s nuclear plants open.” Andbankruptcycase filings show charges byconsultants for FirstEnergy Solutions supporting the launch of the alliance and coordinating with it.
Documents obtained by the Energy and Policy Institute through public records requests also show that a consultant for FirstEnergy Solutions provided “draft testimony” on HB 6 to public officials from Summit County, which is listed on an alliance website as a coalition supporter.
Employee “contests” also took place at FirstEnergy Solutions’ Davis-Besse and Perry nuclear power plants last winter to sign up employees for the alliance’s “employee ambassador” program. And several FirstEnergy Solutions’ employees were featured in an allianc
.
At least two FirstEnergy Solutions’ employees from that video also appear in an August 2019video ad from Ohioans for Energy Security. NeitherMatt Messenger norLindsay Humble are identified as FirstEnergy Solutions employees in the August ad, however.
FirstEnergy Solutions won’t say if it’s funding Ohioans for Energy Security.
“Please refer to FES’s statement and lawsuit on the referendum,” spokesperson Angela Pruitt responded to Anderson when he asked whether FirstEnergy Solutions was funding Ohioans for Energy Security and why company employees were in the ad. Neither document answers the questions.
What emerges is an apparent close working relationship between FirstEnergy’s generation subsidiary, its employees and its consultants with both the Alliance and Ohioans for Energy Security. However, conclusive answers about who funds and directs Ohioans for Energy Security’s activities remain hidden.
Ohioans for Energy Security used one of the same contractors that Generation Now used for its ads pushing for passage of the nuclear subsidy bill.
A Federal Communications Commission filing posted by OpenSecrets.org shows that Strategic Media Placement arranged to air the anti-referendum ad for Ohioans for Energy Security. Strategic Media Placement also arranged to air ads from Generation Now, a pro-subsidy group that pushed for passage of the nuclear subsidy bill. FirstEnergy Solutions employees Messenger and Humble also appeared in at least one of the group’s ads.
Generation Now is also reported to have made substantial “dark money” contributions to elect Ohio Speaker of the House Larry Householder and others sympathetic to nuclear subsidies. At least one donor to that group is the International Union of Operating Engineers, Local 18, based in Cleveland. Some of the union’s members likely work at FirstEnergy Solutions plants.
It’s unclear who else is funding Generation Now. The union’s $295,000 in 2019 spending for the group is less than a sixth of the more than $1.9 million the group reportedly spent on ads supporting HB 6. The group is not required to disclose its funders.
The group has been paying people to hover near folks seeking to collect signatures for the referendum petition. Those “field staffers” are sometimes referred to as “blockers,” because their presence can discourage voters from listening to those who seek to explain a referendum.
Referendum supporters’ funding is also a secret, but may be revealed later.
“The funders of the TV ads, direct mail and blocking against the issue have no obligation to disclose their funders or expenditures,” said Gene Pierce, spokesperson for Ohioans Against Corporate Bailouts, which is trying to get the referendum on the ballot. “Ohio law only requires disclosure of such expenses once the issue is qualified to the ballot and only on expenses incurred after such qualification.”
The referendum initiative group’s corporate filing with the Secretary of State also reveals only its attorney,David R. Langdon of West Chester, Ohio, as its authorized agent for incorporation and statutory agent. Pierce said the group’s funders “will be revealed, as required by Ohio law, 30 days after” petitions are filed next month. The group needs to collect approximately 266,000 voters’ signatures.
Bill Siderewicz, president of natural gas power plant developer Clean Energy Future, has already beenreported to be a contributing member of Ohioans Against Corporate Bailouts. LoParo hasclaimed that a Chinese bank provided financing for some of that company’s projects.FirstEnergy has received loans from the same bank.
The referendum petition lists David J. Eckert, Trevor J. Vessels and Brandon Sean Lynaugh as the three committee members who represent the group. Eckert is a “campaign manager/general consultant,” Pierce said. LinkedIn shows that the other two work in public relations fields.
“I expect voters will see that our donors,” Pierce said, “reflect a wide range of residential and commercial interests who are all negatively impacted by this legislation.”
ABOUT KATHIANN M. KOWALSKI
Kathi is the author of 25 books and more than 600 articles, and writes often on science and policy issues. In addition to her journalism career, Kathi is an alumna of Harvard Law School and has spent 15 years practicing law. She is a member of the Society of Environmental Journalists and the National Association of Science Writers. Kathi covers the state of Ohio.
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https://www.ideastream.org/news/dark-money-in-the-spotlight-in-heated-nuclear-bailout-referendum-campaign}:
hmmn, seems legit
The controversial U.S. Supreme Court decision Citizens United v FEC almost a decade ago helped bring in hundreds of millions of dollars into political campaigns – and the groups that get some of it don’t have to disclose where it came from.
Dark money gets a lot of attention at the federal level, but it’s hard at work in Ohio right now.
The proposal to overturn the state’s new nuclear power plant bailout isn’t even on the ballot. But the group that’sgathering signatures to put it there has launched
.
“If someone approaches you with a petition to allow you to vote on corporate bailouts, sign it,” the ad copy reads.
This comes in response to a campaign working against the potential ballot issue. It’s estimated to have spent $3.5 million on its own petition supporting the bailout, though it does nothing beyond that, along with mailers featuring vivid images invoking the Chinese flag, and ads including a new one, featuring the line: “They’re bringing in outsiders into our state to roam our neighborhoods with petitions, and they’re asking for your personal information.”
Bradley Smith is a professor at Capital University Law School near Columbus and a former chair of the Federal Elections Commission. And he’s fascinated.
“To me, what's really interesting is that they're doing this all this just to keep the petition from even qualifying for the ballot and that's what I don't recall saying before. Is somebody coming forward and trying to spending a large amount of money just to get the issue from even being placed on the ballot,” Smith said.
Smith uses that word “somebody” because nobody knows exactly who is Ohioans For Energy Security, the group behind those commercials and fliers. And spokesman Carlo LoParo says that’s the way it will stay.
“It's not that we won't disclose our donors. It's that we're following the law, and the law allows us free speech. And we're exercising that free speech right,” LoParo said.
To be fair, the group trying to overturn the bailout law, Ohioans Against Corporate Bailouts, is also not revealing its donors. But the law requires that group as a ballot issue PAC, to file financial disclosure forms within 30 days of filing its petitions to put the law before voters next year – which they have to do by October 21.
But its spokesman Gene Pierce said his group is made up of those who opposed the bailout law when it was House Bill 6. “You're talking about consumer groups, business groups, renewable energy advocates and people who want to offer more competitive pricing and the electricity marketplace in Ohio.”
LoParo said that group also includes natural gas companies, and that a Chinese government-owned bankhas invested in those companies. Pierce saysit’s ridiculous to tie the referendum group to the Chinese. And he pointed to FirstEnergy Solutions, the owner of the state’s two nuclear power plants, and its former parent company FirstEnergy as likely donors to the bailout opposition.
There is little known about that opposition. Ohioans For Energy Security is alimited liability corporation, and there’s little information in its filing with the Secretary of State’s office. Carlo LoParo is a longtime Statehouse PR figure, having worked for, among others, Republican former Secretary of State and candidate for governor Ken Blackwell – who also employed Gene Pierce.
LoParo also spoke for the Ohio Clean Energy Jobs Alliance, which advocated for passing the bailout law, along with Generation Now, another dark money group. That group is sending people it’s calling monitors out to share the pro-bailout side with people being asked to sign petitions to get the bailout to the ballot. And there have beenclashes between circulators and monitors.
Groups including the League of Women Voters and Common Cause Ohiohave called for more financial disclosure of the groups involved in this referendum. Ohio State University Moritz College of Law professor Dan Tokaji said it’s simple.
“It's fundamentally an issue of transparency. We should know we the people should know who's funding campaigns whether they're for ballot measures or for candidates,” Tokaji said.
Those who oppose that say corporate and high profile donors sometimes want to be shielded to avoid protests and boycotts, and that they support dark money groups for reasons beyond political activity. And former FEC chair Bradley Smith said there’s often plenty of information about dark money groups anyway.
“I think anybody would be it would not be shocked to discover that there's a fair amount of energy company money behind this the people who in fact would benefit from this directly. So I know how much voters would benefit,” said Smith.
Smith is the founder of the Institute for Free Speech, which opposes campaign finance reform. It’s a 501(c)3 organization – those are religious, charitable, scientific or educational groups. And it doesn’t have to disclose its donors. But on its website, it does provide IRS forms required for nonprofit organizations. So do the League of Women Voters and Common Cause Ohio. They are 501(c)4 or social welfare organizations, and are calling for more disclosure.
Copyright 2019 The Statehouse News Bureau. To see more, visit The Statehouse News Bureau.
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https://www.ewg.org/energy/22892/ohio-shady-front-groups-fight-dirty-attack-grassroots-campaign-against-1-billion}:
10/19
Ohio, Shady Front Groups Fight Dirty To Attack Grassroots Campaign Against $1 Billion Nuke/Coal Bailout
An ugly political war is raging in Ohio, pitting consumer and environmental advocates against big utilities and dark-money front groups that want to make electricity customers pay more than $1 billion to bail out failing nuclear and coal-fired power plants. The bad guys are fighting dirty, using deceitful scare tactics and alleged cash payoffs that are now under investigation by the state attorney general, to derail the anti-bailout campaign.
It’s a fight for the future of energy that could erupt in other states as utilities seek public subsidies to prop up their outdated, inefficient, dirty and dangerous power plants against competition from cheaper and cleaner solar and wind power. Figures compiled by EWG show that in the past three years, five states have handed utilities more than $15 billion in taxpayer-funded bailouts of failing nuclear plants.
This summer, Ohio utility interests spent almost $10 million to push through legislation to slap a surcharge on ratepayers’ monthly electricity bills in a move to subsidize two nuclear plants owned by FirstEnergy Solutions and two coal plants owned by Ohio Valley Electric Corp. Not only are the plants not needed to provide a secure supply of electricity but the bill would also effectively stop state renewable energy and efficiency mandates for utilities.
Republican Gov. Mike DeWine signed the bill. But a grassroots group, Ohioans Against Corporate Bailouts, wants to let voters decide whether to overturn the law.
The anti-bailout campaign has until Oct. 21 to collect more than 265,000 signatures to put a referendum on the November 2020 ballot. The bailout surcharge would be on hold until the vote. But two shadowy front groups – Generation Now andOhioans for Energy Security,both of which have refused to reveal their funding sources – are trying to keep the question off the ballot.
Last month, Ohioans for Energy Security unveiled a TV ad that used ominous military imagery and voice-of-doom narration to imply falsely that because Chinese banks had lent money for natural-gas plants that would benefit if the nukes and coal-burners were closed, the anti-bailout campaign is helping Beijing “meddle in our elections”:
>
. They shuttered our factories. Now they’re coming for our energy jobs. The Chinese government is quietly invading our American electric grid, intertwining themselves financially in our energy infrastructure. Now a special-interest group boosting Chinese financial interests is targeting Ohio’s energy – taking Ohio money, exporting Ohio jobs,even risking our national security.
Although FirstEnergy Solutions says it has no connection to Ohioans for Energy Security, Bloomberg reported that two people featured in the ad had, in an earlier video, identified themselves as employees of the utility.
As Ohioans for Energy Security’s $3 million-plus ad campaign continues, Generation Now hired a consulting firm called FieldWorks to try to convince voters not to sign the petition calling for the anti-bailout referendum.
Last week, the Dayton Daily News reported that Ohioans Against Corporate Bailouts alleged that unidentified door-to-door solicitors had offered their petition circulators $10,000 to $100,000 to quit and offered to buy signed petitions. Generation Now told the Daily News that FieldWorks was not authorized to offer cash, and a staffer was fired “after misbehavior was documented.”
Buying or selling election petitions is a felony. Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost said he had opened an investigation into the allegations, saying his office “will not tolerate harassment and intimidation in the state’s petition process.”
A third anti-referendum front group has now surfaced, misleadingly called Protect Ohio Clean Energy Jobs. Emails and documents obtained by our colleagues at the Energy and Policy Institute revealed that an outside lobbyist for FirstEnergy Solutions is the group’s treasurer.
The group is running Facebook adsthat direct people to SaveOhioCleanEnergyJobs.com, a site that provides false and misleading information about the referendum and urges voters to “remove your signature before it is filed with the Ohio Secretary of State’s Office.”
Efforts to thwart Ohioans’ grassroots campaign for clean energy are of a piece with strategies we’re seeing across the nation. Utilities want to continue to control the grid with power from their expensive central plants, and slow down the inevitable transition to renewable sources that serve customers rather than generate profits for shareholders. This greedy and shortsighted strategy is driving up costs for everyone, including vulnerable low-income families, increasing air pollution that threatens public health and fueling the climate crisis.
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Who’s behind Ohioans for Energy Security’s ad campaign to scare voters?
Dave Anderson • August 28, 2019
Ohioans for Energy Security, a new entity blanketing Ohio with a wave of television ads defending the bailout of FirstEnergy Solutions, is brought to you by the same people who campaigned for the controversial bailout plan.
The group formed last month in Ohio as a for-profit Limited Liability Corporation. It just launched a $1 million ad campaign designed to scare voters away from signing petitions toplace a referendum on House Bill 6 on the 2020 ballot. The bill in question, passed by the Ohio General Assembly and signed by Governor Mike DeWine in July, will force Ohio consumers to pay to bail out uncompetitive nuclear and coal plants in Ohio. It also rolls back Ohio’s life-and-money saving clean energy standards, which helped to support 112,000 jobs in the Buckeye State.
“In the coming weeks, don’t give your information to the Chinese government,” Ohioans for Energy Security tells visitors to its website. “Don’t sign their petitionallowing China control over Ohio.”
Ohioans for Energy Security’s website tells voters to call its hotline to report petition gatherers. Petition signatures for statewide referendums are submitted to the Ohio Secretary of State and Attorney General, not the Chinese government.
Ohioans for Energy Security points to several reports that the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China has been among the banks that financed several new gas projects in Ohio developed by Clean Energy Future, a company that opposed HB 6.
The Columbus Dispatch reviewed those reports and concluded that “the group behind the commercial offered no evidence that such a plot exists.” It didn’t find “any evidence that the Chinese government intends to play a role in the possible repeal of House Bill 6.”
The Cleveland Scene writes that the group’s “bonkers” first ad “continues with even less tenuous grasps on the issues surrounding HB 6.”
Ohioans for Energy Security doesn’t mention that the broad-based opposition to HB 6 includes consumer advocates, environmentalists, free market groups, health experts, and manufacturers, as a quick review of opponent testimony on the bill will show.
The pro-bailout group also doesn’t mention Securities and Exchange Commission filings that show the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China has committed many millions of dollars to FirstEnergy Corp., the parent company that spawned FES.A March 2018 declaration by Charles Moore, FES’s chief restructuring officer, also included the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China on a list of “interest parties and significant creditors” in FES’s bankruptcy case, under the subheading “Banks, Lenders, UCC Lien.”
Ohioans for Energy Security is led by the spokesperson for another pro-bailout group backed by FirstEnergy Solutions
Carlo Loparo is listed as the president of Ohioans for Energy Security on political issue ad disclosures on file with the Federal Communications Commission. Loparo also serves as the group’s public spokesperson.
Loparo is also the spokesperson for the Ohio Clean Energy Jobs Alliance (OCEJA), a coalition “powered by FirstEnergy Solutions” that launched last fall with the help of the utility’s outside lobbyists and public relations consultants, and campaigned in support of HB 6.
Loparo is the president of the Columbus-based Loparo Public Relations, and boasts 25 years of experience in “media relations, strategic message development and crisis communications,” according to his firm’s website.
Amy Natoce, the vice president of Loparo Public Relations, was the political director for Dave Yost’s successful campaign for Ohio Attorney General. Yost will soon decide on whether to approve of revised summary language for the referendum petition, a first step toward getting the referendum on the ballot in 2020. Attorneys representing FES and Generation Now, Inc., a dark money group that spent millions on ads supporting HB 6, have been targeting Yost’s office with letters opposing the effort to put the issue on the ballot.
Ohioans for Energy Security’s first ad uses stock footage, features employees of FirstEnergy Solutions
“Don’t sign your name to a plan that kills Ohio jobs, harms Ohio communities, and endangers our energy independence,” Ohioans for Energy Security’s first ad tells viewers as stoic headshots of several individuals flash on screen.
The ad doesn’t identify those individuals, but at least three of the individuals appear to be recycled from stock footage that had previously been used in a 2017 Ohio ballot initiative ad around prescription drug prices.
Image from 2017 prescription drug ballot initiative ad
Image from 2017 prescription drug ballot initiative ad
Image from 2019 Ohioans for Energy Security ad
Image from 2019 Ohioans for Energy Security ad
Image from 2017 prescription drug ballot initiative ad
Image from 2017 prescription drug ballot initiative ad
Image from 2019 Ohioans for a Secure Energy Future ad
Image from 2019 Ohioans for Energy Security ad
The 2017 ad which used the same stock photos, called “Step Forward,” no longer appears online, though Ballotpedia references it in a database of ads from the 2017 prescription drug initiative campaign. A copy was provided to the Energy and Policy Institute.
That 2017 ad was funded by “Ohio Taxpayers for Lower Drug Prices,” which employedRex Elsass, a Republican operative and the owner of Strategic Group for Media.
Some of Ohioans for Energy Security’s ad contracts on file with the FCC name as the buyer Strategic Media Placement, also owned by Elsass. The same firm made ad buys for Generation Now.
The Ohionans for Energy Security ad also includes several employees of FirstEnergy Solutions who also appeared in earlier ads supporting HB 6, produced by the dark money group Generation Now, Inc. Some also appeared in videos produced by the FES-backed Ohio Clean Energy Jobs Alliance.
A screenshot of a Generation Now Facebook ad featuring Matt Messenger, who the ad did not not disclose is a project manager at FES’s Perry nuclear power plant.
Ohioans for Energy Security first ad features a similar image of Messenger, without disclosing his name or employer
Back in June, the Energy and Policy Institute asked a spokesperson for FES at Sitrick and Company why the utility’s employees were appearing in Generation Now’s ads, and if it was funding the group’s efforts. The spokesperson said he would “be happy to look into this and get back to you,” but then never responded with any further information.
A monthly fee statement filed in FES’s bankruptcy case later revealed that Sitrick & Company staff discussed EPI’s inquiry with “D. Griffing” and the “Dewey Square” team. David Griffing is the vice president of government affairs for FES. The Dewey Square Group is a lobbying firm that has received nearly $800,000 for its work on FES’s bailout campaigns in Ohio and Pennsylvania, which included work on the launch and operations of the Ohio Clean Energy Jobs Alliance.
[MISSING]
Excerpt from Sitrick & Company’s filing in FES’s bankruptcy case discussing EPI’s inquiry regarding FES employees working with Generation Now
Links to Generation Now’s ad firm and a pro-Householder PAC backed by Murray Energy
The server for the group’s website – www.ohioansforenergysecurity.com – also hosts the websites of Elsass’s Strategy Group Company and Front Porch Strategies.
It also hosts a site – LarryHouseholderFightsforus.com – supporting Ohio’s Republican House Speaker Larry Householder, whose rise to the speakership was backed by FirstEnergy and Generation Now. Householder then led the drive to pass HB 6. The pro-Householder site is paid for by the Michigan-based Hardworking Americans Committee, which spent over $450,000 on ads opposing Householder’s Republican primary opponent Kevin Black in 2018.
Federal Elections Commission data shows the Hardworking Americans Committee received $50,000 in 2018 from the PAC of Murray Energy, a coal producer that stands to benefit from HB 6.
The Hardworking Americans also received $50,000 that year from Political Education Patterns, the PAC for the Cleveland-based International Union of Operating Engineers Local 18. IUOE Local 18 doled out $295,000 to Generation Now in 2018 and 2019, according to FEC data. Mark A. Totman, the union’s VP, serves as one of Governor Dewine’s appointees to the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio Nominating Council, where he represents organized labor.
Updated at 7:30 ET on Aug. 28, 2019 to include information about Ohioans for Energy Security’s use of stock footage in its ad.
Posted in: Coal, FirstEnergy, Ohio Clean Energy Jobs Alliance Tagged in: carlo loparo, coal bailout, firstenergy solutions, generation now inc, hb 6, larry householder, loparo public relations, nuclear bailout, ohio clean energy jobs alliance, ohio secretary of state, ohioans for energy security, rex elsass
Posted by Dave Anderson
Dave Anderson is the policy and communications manager for the Energy and Policy Institute. Dave has been working at the nexus of clean energy and public policy since 2008. Prior to joining the Energy and Policy Institute, he was an outreach coordinator for the climate and energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. He is also an alumnus of the Sierra Club and the Alliance for Climate Protection (now the Climate Reality Project). Dave’s research has helped to spur public scrutiny of political attacks on clean energy and climate science by powerful special interests, such as ExxonMobil and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). His work has been cited by major media outlets, such as CBS News and the Wall Street Journal, and he has served as a speaker on panels at national solar industry conferences. Dave holds a MA in Political Science from the University of New Hampshire, where he also received a BA in Humanities.
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