A conservative clean energy group is working to counter a rising number of political attacks on Republicans by green groups that are trying to make the election all about climate change.
The group, ClearPath Action, is one of the only groups that is backing GOP incumbent lawmakers on the down ballot based on their support for clean energy resources, which includes nuclear power, clean coal carbon-capture projects, hydropower, advanced energy technology, and natural gas. It doesn’t include solar and wind as part of its conservative clean energy platform.
The League of Conservation Voters, Sierra Club and others began an offensive in recent days targeting some of the 15 Republican candidates that ClearPath has endorsed and is supporting with a multi-million dollar Internet campaign that plays up their clean energy record. On Wednesday alone, LCV pumped $3 million in an eleventh-hour ad campaign to make sure Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., is not re-elected.
Two House members ClearPath is supporting, Reps. Carlos Curbelo of Florida and Elise Stefanik of New York, have come under increasing attack by Democratic groups and others in recent days.
For Curbelo, ClearPath is putting up $500,000 to defend his record through Election Day, including a cable television ad that will begin running on Friday. The ad will mark the first time ClearPath has funded a television campaign for a candidate since it began endorsing candidates in this election season.
The effort is meant to counter “erroneous attacks by Democrats” and “tout his true clean energy record,” said ClearPath in a statement. A 30-second digital ad blames “extreme liberals” for making “false claims about Carlos Curbelo’s environmental record.”
Recent claims by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, meant to criticize Curbelo’s environmental record, were later rated “mostly false” by the watchdog group PolitiFact, ClearPath points out in its counterpunch campaign.
“Carlos Curbelo puts South Florida and the environment first — and he has the record to prove it,” the ClearPath ad said. Curbelo supports legislation to make incentives permanent for commercializing carbon-capture technology for coal and other fossil fuel power plants; increased funding for the Energy Department’s advanced energy program; and legislation to improve recovery of cleanup costs and damages from oil spills.
ClearPath will also be launching a new mailing campaign to defend Stefanik after big environmentalist groups began lobbying aggressively against her, using an environmental “score card” put out by the left-leaning League of Conservation Voters that ClearPath says is bias.
“Sierra Club and others are attacking Stefanik by using voting scorecards issued by the League of Conservation Voters that have become partisan tools rather than objective measures of clean energy and environmental support,” ClearPath said. “They don’t include (and even penalize) votes supporting such carbon-free resources as advanced nuclear and hydropower and are often an irrelevant and counterproductive benchmark for judging serious and practical action on clean energy.”
Darren Goode, a ClearPath spokesman, said the green groups are dumping a lot of money into these remaining weeks to go after Republicans in down ballot races, and very few groups are offering a conservative counterpunch while clarifying their records on clean energy.
He said that surprisingly, one of the nation’s big environmental groups, the Environmental Defense Fund, is backing GOP candidates that stand up for the environment, but they are in the minority. The Fund has also endorsed Curbelo, for example.
ClearPath is focused only on the down ballot races and has provided just north of $4 million to inform voters on the lawmakers’ clean energy records. Goode said the group’s “very innovative campaign strategy” is meant to do more with less by using the internet and digital ad campaigns to get the word out strategically.
