This is the twenty-seventh article in a continuing series by the NRDC Action Fund on the environmental stances of candidates in key races around the country.
South of Chicago there’s a borderland between the city and the prairies of downstate Illinois. The 11th Congressional district encompasses much of this region, where the factories and shopping centers of the suburbs fade into rural cornfields. The district is a political boundary as well, with Chicago’s Democratic machine meeting the heavily Republican tradition of southern Illinois, which dates back to the days of Abraham Lincoln. Democrat Deborah Halvorson, former majority leader of the Illinois State Senate, is in her first term representing the 11th District. This November, she will be challenged by Air Force pilot and Iraq War veteran Adam Kinzinger.
Rep. Halvorson distinguished herself as a champion for the environment during her tenure in the Illinois Senate, earning endorsements from the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) and Environment Illinois. In her first year in Congress, she has continued to vote the right way on environmental issues, earning a 93% ratingfrom LCV. Last June, she voted in favor of the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), the first global warming bill to ever pass a chamber of Congress. Following the vote, Halvorson said in a statement, “It's clear we need to change the direction of energy policy in this country, and this legislation will move us towards clean, renewable, home grown energy… the 11th District has a lot to gain from this bill, including potential investments in wind and biofuels."
In sharp contrast, Adam Kinzinger has received large donations from notorious global warming deniers and corporate polluters, Koch Industries. He has also joined their front-group’s, Americans for Prosperity (AFP), campaign against climate legislation. Largely funded by Koch, AFP works to populate a radically right-wing ideology that calls for eliminating all taxes and all environmental regulations.
On his campaign website, Kinzinger echoes AFP’s misleading rhetoric claiming that ACES will “only force industries to leave the U.S. [for] a country with far lesser or no environmental standards.” And, on his Facebook, he claims that ACES will “raise energy prices and cost millions of jobs.” According to the bipartisan experts in the Congressional Budget Office, however, ACES will only cost the average household about $175 a year. Furthermore, researchers from the University of Illinois, Yale University and the University of California found that ACES could potentially create as many as 1.9 million new jobs.
Considering that Kinzinger also says that the “United States has some of the strictest emission policies in the world,” we probably should not expect him to get all (or any) of the facts right about environmental policy.
The NRDC Action Fund believes that it is important for the public in general, and the voters of specific Congressional districts, be aware of this information as they weigh their choices for November.