Big news out of Texas:
The county judge gave Democratic Rep. Beto O’Rourke a dire warning earlier this year when the three-term El Paso congressman leaned down to sip from a water fountain outside the Lasalle County courthouse, a roughly two-and-a-half-hour drive from San Antonio.
A gas drilling company contaminated the water table, the judge told him, and no one trusted the water to be safe. It’s a story of industrial pollution that’s become familiar to O’Rourke since he began barnstorming the state in March in a bid to unseat incumbent Republican Sen. Ted Cruz.
“We hear these stories around the state,” O’Rourke told HuffPost by phone on Sunday, calling during halftime at his daughter’s soccer game. “It becomes this very personal, critically important public health issue. They want to know someone is fighting for their water and their air.”
For at least one major environmental group, the 45-year-old congressman is that someone. On Monday, the League of Conservation Voters plans to throw its support behind O’Rourke, giving him its fourth Senate endorsement yet for the 2018 election cycle.
“He’s had a really strong record in Congress on our issues,” Craig Auster, League of Conservation Voters’ political action committee director, told HuffPost. “We’re excited that in a state like Texas that someone is running on our issues and has done so much for the environment in his legislative career.”
The League of Conservation Voters Action Fund spent a record $4,461,552 in 2016, including on 22 Senate candidates, according to data collated by the Center for Responsive Politics. Ahead of the 2018 midterm elections, the group has endorsed Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) and Rep. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.), as well as Doug Jones’ campaign for Tuesday’s Alabama special election.
Let’s give Senator Shitkicker a swift kick in the ass out the door next year. Click here to donate and get involved with Beto’s campaign.