Conservative groups and congressional Republicans plan to use the scandal that befell former Democratic Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber to attack clean energy groups and big donors such as billionaire climate activist Tom Steyer.
Kitzhaber, whose resignation is effective Wednesday, stepped down after revelations that his fiancee, Cylvia Hayes, had allegedly been paid by private firms to promote green energy policies within the Kitzhaber administration. Conservatives say the episode smacks of cronyism that they have come to view as typical between environmental advocates and Democratic politics.
“This is just another example of environmental activist groups attempting to influence policy under a veil of secrecy and one more reason these groups merit additional scrutiny. Beneath the violation of public trust by the Oregon state officials, we have far-left foundations funneling significant funds to an environmental group to orchestrate this type of activism without any public disclosure,” Senate Environment and Public Works Chairman Jim Inhofe told the Washington Examiner.
Steyer will be a top target for conservatives on and off Capitol Hill, given his ties to the scandal. A charity the ex-hedge fund manager runs with his wife has given millions of dollars in grants to the Energy Foundation, a climate change organization that partially funded a fellowship for Hayes at the Clean Economy Development Center. Her $118,000 fellowship was not publicly disclosed until the scandal began to unfold.
After Hayes left the organization, it pitched Kitzhaber on a “Low Carbon Fuel Standard” that the now ex-governor and Democrats in the state are trying to push into law.
The goal for conservatives is to cast a shadow on the influence of Steyer and like-minded environmental groups in the 2016 race. At $74 million, he was the biggest personal spender in the 2014 election in an effort to elevate climate change as a national electoral issue. His results were mixed — he split his four Senate races and lost two of three gubernatorial contests.
“I wouldn’t want his Midas touch,” said Tom Pyle, president of the conservative American Energy Alliance. “It does take a little bit of a shine off of this whole agenda. If you peel back the layers it’s cronyism, it’s set-asides, it’s sleeping in the governor’s mansion and doing the bidding of the folks who pay them.”
Pyle’s group is partially funded by the billionaire Koch Brothers. Pyle said his group is different from clean energy groups because its mission is to untangle government from energy markets, rather than promote incentives for specific energy sources. Opponents would disagree there’s a difference, noting Koch business interests in fossil fuel companies.
NextGen Climate Action, Steyer’s super PAC, told the Examiner that the grants from TomKat Charitable Trust to the Energy Foundation from 2009 to 2013 “represented less than one-quarter of 1 percent” than the foundation received in 2013 and that TomKat wasn’t involved in Oregon legislative work.
“In addition, the use of those funds were restricted so they could not be used to influence legislative, lobbying or electoral purposes,” spokesman Bobby Whithorne said.
The fallout comes as Capitol Hill is set to debate a pair of expiring tax credits that conservative Republicans oppose: one for wind that would die this year if it isn’t extended, another for rooftop solar that would end after 2016.
“How are we going to handle this? We plan to fight back. If clean energy critics want a bare-knuckle brawl, then they’re going to get one. This type of ‘guilt by association’ simply isn’t going to work,” said Ken Johnson, vice president of communications with the Solar Energy Industries Association. “If it served their purposes, [the Koch Brothers and their allies] would portray Snow White as an adulteress, a deadbeat and a crack queen.”
Environmental groups also disagree that the Kitzhaber spat is about cronyism. The governor, who had just begun a fourth term, had long touted clean energy as a solution to address manmade climate change.
“Kitzhaber has been supporting clean energy for literally decades … far predating his relationship with Hayes,” one environmental source told the Examiner. “One of his campaign planks was in support of renewables before this relationship even popped up. So, it’s a flawed assertion to say Kitzhaber supported renewables because of Hayes and therefore crony capitalism.”
They say incentives awarded to renewable energy are about putting it on par with coal, oil and natural gas, which enjoy legacy tax breaks built into the federal tax code.
“And here’s the difference — the oil industry is actually hurting the world, whereas green power is not,” Doug Moore, executive director with the Oregon League of Conservation Voters, told the Examiner.
“In a lot of ways it’s like Solyndra all over again,” he added, referring to the solar panel-maker that took a $535 million federal loan guarantee and went bankrupt in 2011, but was cleared of any cronyism under a House Republican probe. “Anything that has a whiff of a problem they’re going to try to this into something else.”
Still, it gives conservatives a platform to take shots at green groups and Steyer. The Californian is the Right’s answer to attacks from liberals about the Koch Brothers, whom Democrats villainized in the 2014 elections as being unwieldy influencers of Republican lawmakers.
“Nationally, it makes it clear that Steyer is the dark lord of dark money on the Democratic side. I suspect once the federal investigations of his cronies in Oregon are complete, he will be recognized as what he is — toxic to the very people and issues he claims to want to help,” said Mike McKenna, a GOP energy lobbyist.
Matt Dempsey, a former Inhofe aide who is now senior director with FTI Consulting, said, “I don’t think it will be too long before you see Capitol Hill speaking up.”
Whether it gets official oversight treatment remains to be seen. Republicans on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee didn’t respond to a request for comment. And Charlotte Baker, a majority spokeswoman for the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which handled the Solyndra investigation, said, “It’s not something we are really focused on right now.”
Instead, Republicans may seek to turn the Oregon incident into another bullet point to back up claims Republicans have made about undue influence by environmental groups.
Steyer and other green-thumbed funders were the subject of a July 2014 report from Sen. David Vitter, R-La., that traced donations from those individuals, which went through foundations to support environmental polices. An aide to Vitter said the Louisiana Republican, who is now chairman of the Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee, would be taking a closer look at the Kitzhaber situation.
“This appears to be only one key example of how far they are willing to go to advance their agenda,” Vitter said.
Correction: This article has been corrected to reflect the timing of when the Clean Economy Development Center pitched the “Low Carbon Fuel Standard” to Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber.
