Grimes, Alison kty

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https://www.propublica.org/article/kentucky-secretary-of-state-alison-grimes-staff-searched-voting-records-for-investigators-rivals-records-show

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https://www.propublica.org/article/the-curious-case-of-a-kentucky-cybersecurity-contract

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According apollreleased this week by Kentucky’s major news organizations, Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes leads Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in the race for his Kentucky Senate seat by two points, 46-44. That’s within the margin of error, and most political insiders are still betting on McConnell. Incumbent senators win about 90 percent of the time, low-turnout midterm elections favor Republicans because the electorate is older, richer, and whiter than in presidential years, and Kentucky is a conservative Republican state.

But if Democrats are to hold onto their Senate majority, they are going to have to win some upsets like the race in Kentucky. Small, rural states are over-represented in the Senate. And they happen to be especially well-represented in the Senate seats that are up this year. To hold their majority, Democrats need some of their incumbent senators in Arkansas, Louisiana, North Carolina, and Alaska to win. They are facing an uphill battle in all of these places. Winning a surprisingly competitive Republican seat in a red state such as Kentucky would give Democrats a lot more breathing room.

Environmentalists might find it hard to root for these Democrats, all of whom promote the fossil fuel industry. Still, they would be wise to so anyway.

But why, you might wonder, is Grimes any better for the environment than McConnell? Kentucky has a lot of coal, and Grimes is relentlessly in favor of mining and burning more of it. Her campaign website declares, “I strongly oppose President Obama’s attack on Kentucky’s energy industry … Developing Kentucky’s supplies of coal is crucial.” Grimes**opposes**the EPA’s**proposed regulations**of CO2 emissions from coal-fired power plants. Climate change appears nowhere on her energy issues**page**. As one political operative from Kentucky puts it, “Regardless of who wins the election, there is no question that Kentucky is going to have a pro-coal senator.”

This situation is not unique to Kentucky. Democrats from red states that are rich in fossil fuels constantly promote dirty energy and criticize President Obama’s efforts to rein in CO2 emissions. Louisiana’s Mary Landrieu voted in favor of reversing the EPA’s decision to label CO2 a pollutant under the Clean Air Act and against the Close Big Oil Tax Loopholes Act of 2012. In her current reelection race, Landrieu has released an ad thatshowsher attacking Obama for not being pro-oil and -gas. Arkansas’s Mark Pryor and Alaska’s Mark Begich have also cast numerous votes in favor of oil and gas. Both, for example,votedto approve the Keystone XL pipeline. So didSen. Kay Hagan of North Carolina, even though she has the strongest environmental record of the vulnerable Dems, and she is the only one receiving organized environmental movement support.

And yet in every case, our air and water will be cleaner and the climate may even be safer if the Democrat wins. Here a few reasons why even the most pro-coal Democrat in the most pro-coal state is better than her Republican opponent:

•Partisan alignment:While a Republican senator from New England could be more pro-environment than a Democrat from Louisiana, in no one Senate race will the Republican candidate ever be more pro-environment than the Democrat. Every pro–fossil fuel Democrat has a vastly better overall environmental record than his Republican counterparts. Pryor has a lifetime rating on the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) scorecard of63 percent. You may find that underwhelming, but his Republican opponent Rep. Tom Cotton’s lifetime score is7 percent. Arkansas’s other senator, John Boozman, a Republican, has a lifetime score of8 percent. Begich has a lifetime score of77 percentand his only anti-environment votes are on issues like ANWR drilling and oil subsidies that reflect his state’s huge economic dependence on the oil industry. Alaska’s Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski has a far worse environmental record, including a21 percentLCV score, than either Begich or Landrieu, whom she would replace as chair of the Senate Energy Committee if Republicans gain control of the Senate. Landrieu has a51 percentlifetime score, while her opponent, Rep. Bill Cassidy, has an11 percentscore and hassuggestedthat climate change’s cause “could just be a shift on the [Earth’s] axis,” rather than human activity.

•Partisan control:Which bills are brought to a vote are determined by the party in the majority. Only a Democratic Senate will move climate legislation. Therefore, you’d be better off with, say, 56 Democratic senators, 49 of whom are pro-environment, plus two pro-environment Republicans, than with only 49 Democratic Senators who are all pro-environment and 10 pro-environment Republicans. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell won’t move climate legislation, even if it has support of the majority of the Senate, if the majority of his Republican caucus opposes it. (These numbers assume only a simple majority is needed to pass legislation, not 60 votes to beat a filibuster, but the point is the same at any threshold.)

•Intensity:There is a difference between mouthing pro-coal or pro-oil platitudes and voting against emissions regulations, and being one of the Senate’s most enthusiastic supporters of fossil fuels. Just as the climate movementneedsnot just legislators who vote the right way, but leaders who sponsor legislation, the fossil fuel industry needs people to aggressively push its legislative agenda. That amendment Landrieu voted for that would have reversed EPA regulation of CO2? It was sponsored by McConnell. “Mitch hasn’t just been a foot soldier in the fight against just about anything that would protect Kentucky communities — he’s led the opposition,” says the Kentucky operative. If a Democrat were ever to win in Oklahoma, a staunchly Republican state with large oil and gas deposits, she would have to be very pro-oil and -gas for a Democrat. But wouldn’t it still be great to replace Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), the foremost climate change denier in Congress?

•Differing political incentives and philosophies:McConnell takes his pro-coal positions on behalf of coal companies while Grimes takes hers on behalf of coal miners. Unfortunately, fossil fuel industry workers perceive their interests as being in favor of climate pollution, rather than, say, protecting the air their children breathe and investing in renewable energy jobs that won’t run out the way fossil fuel deposits eventually will. As unlikely as it is to get them to change their minds, it’s more plausible than getting greedy right-wing plutocrats who own the fossil fuel companies to see the light. Just ask Charles and David Koch.

Generally speaking, what a politician really believes doesn’t much matter compared to what they actually say and do. But consider gay marriage: all those Democrats who we thought secretly supported gay marriage and were just afraid to admit it — that’s President Obama, Vice President Biden, and the majority of Democrats in the Senate — did in fact come out for it once it became politically safe to do so. There is a much greater chance that a Democrat, rather than a Republican, from Kentucky or Alaska is secretly in favor of good climate policy and will shift as soon as it is safe to. Jay Rockefeller, the Democratic senator retiring from a seat in West Virginia, didn’t get into politics because he loved coal. He supported coal because he represented a state that was full of it. Now that he is retiring, he is free to take more daring votes on environmental issues, and he has done so. For example, in 2012 he stood alone among coal-country lawmakers in votingagainsta Republican effort to overrule the EPA’s mercury rule for coal-fired power plants.

As it stands right now, environmentalists aren’t going to have many opportunities to feel ambivalent on election night. Pryor, Begich, and Landrieu are all losing, according to thepolls. So is Natalie Tennant, the Democratic nominee in West Virginia. Herraceisn’t even close, despite heroppositionto the EPA’s proposed power plant regulations. But given a taste of the Republicans who will replace them, enviros might find that those dirty Dems seem a lot better in retrospect.