Earlier in this campaign, Bernie Sanders signed a pledge to refuse money from fossil fuel interests. It’s time for Hillary Clinton to join him.
Hillary Clinton’s Connections to the Oil and Gas Industry Three Enbridge lobbyists contributed to Clinton’s campaign. While she was Secretary of State, Clinton signed off on the Enbridge pipeline (the alternative to the Keystone XL pipeline). While Secretary of State, Clinton pushed fracking in countries around the world, through the department’s Global Shale Gas Initiative. According to Grist, after the Bulgarian government signed a five-year deal with Chevron, major public protests led the Bulgarian parliament to pass a fracking moratorium. Clinton traveled to Bulgaria and then dispatched her special envoy for energy in Eurasia, Richard Morningstar, to push back against the fracking bans, which were eventually overturned. Much more at the link.In April 2008, Clinton’s campaign aired a television ad portraying Obama’s support for a 2005 energy bill as a quid pro quo for campaign donations. The ad said Obama had “accepted $200,000 from executives and employees of oil companies,” while criticizing him for voting “for the Bush-Cheney energy bill that that put $6 billion in the pocket of big oil.”
Hillary Clinton’s Biggest Campaign Bundlers Are Fossil Fuel LobbyistsScott Parven and Brian Pomper, lobbyists at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, have been registered to lobby for the Southern California-based oil giant Chevron since 2006, with contracts totaling more than $3 million. The two bundled Clinton contributions of $24,700 and $29,700, respectively. They have helped Chevron over the years resist efforts to eliminate oil and gas tax breaks and to impose regulations to reduce carbon emissions.
Ankit Desai, vice president for government relations at top LNG exporter Cheniere Energy, bundled $82,000 to the Clinton camp, with much of it coming from Cheniere Energy executives. Cheniere executives, including Desai, have donated $38,800 to Clinton’s campaign.
ML Strategies’ David Leiter lobbied in 2014 on behalf of Sempra Energy when the company received approval for its LNG export facility in Hackberry, Louisiana. Leiter, who bundled $36,550 for Clinton’s campaign, also is a lobbyist for ExxonMobil. Steve Coll noted in a New Yorker article derived from his book on the oil giant, Private Empire, that Leiter, an ex-staffer to former Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), was retained, along with a host of others, to increase the company’s reach into the Democratic Party it had ignored for years.
Clinton’s Support from Oil and Gas Industry Lobbyists“The truth is that Secretary Clinton has relied heavily on funds from lobbyists working for the oil, gas and coal industry. According to an analysis by Greenpeace, Hillary Clinton’s campaign and her super PAC have received more than $4.5 million from the fossil fuel industry. In fact, 57 oil, gas and coal industry lobbyists have directly contributed to Clinton’s campaign, with 43 of them contributing the maximum allowed for the primary. Eleven of those 53 lobbyists are working as bundlers and have raised over $1.1 million in bundled contributions between them.
“It’s no wonder that back in December Clinton refused to agree to stop accepting money from the fossil fuel industry when pressed at a town hall, saying, ‘I’m not going to do a litmus test on them.’
Update: Mea Culpa, Sanders does it too!
The central dispute between the two camps, then, appears to be about the volume of money Clinton gets from or through fossil fuel lobbyists.
But Sanders, too, is apparently accepting money from the fossil fuel lobby. According to an Intercept examination of online records of lobbyist disclosure of political contributions, the Sanders campaign took in $24 from Nathen Causman, a lobbyist for the LNE Group, whose clients include American Municipal Power Inc.
The Sanders campaign had no comment.