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Sierra Club Response

Dear XXX:

Thank you for contacting the Sierra Club Political Committee concerning the Club's endorsement of Senator Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island. Criticism of this endorsement is based on a misapprehension of the nature of the Sierra Club's political program. For the 25 years that this program has been in place we have rewarded good environmental actions and criticized bad environmental actions in an even-handed and non-partisan fashion. The Sierra Club political program will continue to operate in this independent fashion: should it fail to do so it would lose credibility with the American voting public, which relies on the organization for unbiased and accurate political information.

It was alleged on the political blog Daily Kos that Senator Chafee's voting record was 20%. In fact, the most commonly consulted environronmenal voting record is produced by the League of Conservation Voters, which gave him a 90% voting record for the 109th Congress, 2003-2004. The Sierra Club produces its own voting compilation for use internally by the political staff and committee. Of four indicator votes that were on issues of particular interest to the Sierra Club in 2004, and that were used to evaluate every senator's voting record, Senator Chafee voted with the Club 100% of the time. We are currently engaged in highlighting votes that we will use to perform a similar evaluation of the 2005-2006 Congressional cycle. We have tenatively identified seven key environmental and trade votes, and Senator Chafee has voted correctly on all seven.

Moreover, Senator Chafee has been an active leader on environmental issues in ways that go well beyond simply voting positively. As a key member of the Environment and Public Works Committee and chair of the subcommittee on Fisheries, Wildlife and Water, he has consistently demonstrated independence and leadership on issues ranging from clean air, to global warming, to cleaning up toxic waste and protecting special places. Some of the highlights include:

-- He has been a champion for rallying colleagues to vote to protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge,

-- He nearly single-handedly assured that the Clean Air Act was not weakened to produce more polluting oil refineries,

-- He is working to assure that the Endangered Species Act is preserved despite attacks from special interests.

The blog implies that the Chafee endorsement was engineered by a small number of Sierra Club top staff. In fact, every Congressional endorsement requires a 2/3 vote by at least two broadly representative committees of volunteers. In this instance the Chafee endorsement was approved unanimously by the Rhode Island Chapter Political Committee, the Rhode Island Chapter Executive Committee, and the national Sierra Club Political Committee.

In 2005 the Sierra Club Board of Directors created a task force to examine and make recommendations on the principles and operations of the Club's political program. One finding of the task force report, which was adopted by the Board, was:

"The strength of our endorsements and our reputation is in our ability to declare in a nonpartisan/bipartisan manner which candidate is the best choice for the environment. Our opponents seek to diminish our power in this arena by labeling us as a special interest, so we need to constantly strive to maintain our reputation."

One of the surest ways of sabotaging our public reputation and consequently diminishing our power would be not to recognize that the Senate needs more environmental champions like Lincoln Chafee.

Sincerely yours,
Jonathan Ela
Chair, Sierra Club Political Committee

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