Republican Senate candidate Carly Fiorina has aggressively campaigned this election on her opposition to comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation. Her campaign rhetoric has apparently attracted some unique donors; Fiorina has received about $63,000 in donations this year from Appalachian coal-mining interests. Much of the money has come from Robert Murray, CEO of Murray Energy in Ohio, who dismisses global warming as "hysterical global goofiness." Robert Murray has helped direct almost $25,000 to Fiorina’s science-denying campaign for Senate, including $10,000 from the company’s federal PAC and personal donations totaling $2,499.
Now why would a coal company from Ohio care if Carly became California’s next senator? Well, Murray Energy is also funding the campaign to roll back California’s landmark global warming legislation AB 32, donating $30,000 to California’s Proposition 23, which would suspend the measure. Ah yes, now it all makes sense.
Fiorina joins a long list of disgraced politicians who have received support from Murray, including imprisoned former Rep. Bob Ney, twice-defeated Dirty Dozen member Richard Pombo and BP apologist Joe Barton.
Fiorina has campaigned and run ads on her opposition to comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation, including a recent ad where she refers to climate change as "the weather" and pokes fun at Senator Boxer for calling climate a national security threat. Yet speaking at the 2008 Republican National Convention in Minneapolis, Minn., she praised Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) cap-and-trade plan as something that would "both create jobs and lower the cost of energy".
So let’s see, when it’s politically convenient Fiorina supports climate action and when it’s politically profitable she’ll collect money from corporate polluters and climate deniers? Talk about playing both sides.
Carly Fiorina’s acceptance of tens of thousands in campaign cash from an Appalachian coal company clearly shows that she’s running for Senate to represent out-of-state corporate polluters, not Californians. She has taken a very wrong turn on the campaign trail if she’s seeking favor from dirty energy companies in Ohio instead of promising the clean energy jobs Californians really want.