The League of Conservation Voters says on its website that they are "working to strengthen and pass he historic energy and climate legislation we've been waiting for". However, with a letter released today, the LCV is actually throwing all its weight behind passage, and even potentially some of its resources potentially working against members of Congress who try to strengthen the bill.
I've been exploring the League of Conservation Voters and how it makes endorsements. One of the consistent criticisms is that single issue endorse Republican moderates when these people take votes to put Republican extremists in leadership positions. This criticism disputes how these single issue groups create checklists as prioritizing the wrong values; for instance, Alito and Roberts are not on the LCV scorecard, and they should be since their judgments affect the environment in very significant ways.
Still, I wanted to look at something slightly different, which is whether according to their own criteria the League of Conservation voters is fair to Democrats. The LCV scorecard is the major scorecard for the environmental movement, this is their measure of how friendly to the environment a candidate is, a selection of key votes that set goals for the large and sprawling set of green groups. So one would expect them to treat all candidates the same and judge them strictly according to votes (with some wiggle room based on the type of district). If you are a Democrat and the LCV endorses a Republican, too bad, the Republican is good on the environment and LCV looks at politicians without fear, favor, or partisanship. We wanted to test whether that's actually how LCV operates.
Here's how we went about understanding the real criteria for the LCV. Adam Terando compiled LCV scores for all endorsed Republican and Democratic candidates. I excluded all but the endorsed incumbents in general elections, so that there's an apples to apples comparison. We then compared scorecards of the Democrats and the Republicans.
Basically, what the data suggests is that LCV has two sets of standards, one for Democrats, who have to meet a certain bar for support, and one for Republicans, who have to meet a lower bar for support.
Democratic Mean LCV lifetime score: 88 Republican Mean LCV lifetime score: 66
+22 advantage for Republicans
Republican Mean 2008 score: 68 Democratic Mean 2008 score: 85
+17 advantage for Republicans
Republican Mean 2007 score: 81 Democratic Mean 2007 score: 93
One of my consistent themes on OpenLeft has been the tendency of progressive advocacy groups to help Republican candidates or conservative Democratic candidates when there's an alternative in the race. There are many reasons why they do this, and today it happened again. Kate Sheppard has a piece on the League of Conservation voters endorsing Republican Susan Collins. LCV is the most important environmental group when it comes to politics; it is actually the 'political arm' of the environmental movement, set up as a collaborative venture among all major green groups to go after bad votes on the environment.
It's curious then that LCV helps Republicans. The full list of LCV endorsements is here, and includes such odious figures as Chris Shays, who has a relatively low lifetime environmental score and is running against progressive Jim Himes, and Chris Smith, the near white supremacist running against progressive Josh Zeitz in NJ-03. There are many races where the non-involvement of the DC environmental community is a signal, such as WA-08, where the Sierra Club decided not to endorse, after endorsing Darcy in 2006.
I have a small research project going to look at their endorsement procedure with a bit more rigor. One interesting nit is that the group has made most of its endorsements over the past few months, but only released its scorecard for 2008 today (as opposed to a rolling scorecard). Another nit is the vote choices in the scorecard (the 2005 version leaves out the Alito and Roberts cloture votes), but I'm not really going to go there.
If you have an hour or so and want to help out with a bit of relatively easy research, drop me an email at stoller at gmail.com or leave a note in the comments.
... Thanks Adam Terando for grabbing the ball and running with it. If you want to help out, email me.
I had a meeting with a senior leader in the environmental movement about a year ago, and we discussed among other things Democratic Senate prospects for 2008. He was really excited about Mark Udall, the Boulder liberal running for Senate in Colorado, who had excellent ratings on the various checklists used by the environmental groups. I expressed skepticism, because I remembered his flip-flop on Iraq. Udall, in 2002, voted against the war, but in 2007, he voted for a blank check bill funding the war to prepare for his role as a 'moderate' candidate running for Senate in Colorado. After I criticized him, Udall wrote this Op-Ed in the Denver Post explaining his vote, lashing out at antiwar critics who would immorally withhold equipment and medical supplies from American troops. He has subsequently done a number of things, both good and bad, but most significantly voting to cave on FISA, using a smarmy and dishonest rationale about telecom companies still being subjected to criminal prosecution.
I've always been clear about my criteria being the bar fight primary. Loyalty to principles when it is hard, and not when you are looking at a checklist of largely meaningless procedural and easily gamed votes, is how I judge people in politics. And I think lots of new progressives, most of us reading this site, get that. Disagreements are important, but loyalty on core principles is paramount.
I'm reading through this complaint the Al Wynn campaign just filed against Donna Edwards with the FEC. He literally accuses SEIU, the League of Conservation Voters, Friends of the Earth, Anna Burger, EMILY's List, the Arca Foundation, ACORN, and the Tides Foundation of campaign finance violations, though as you can see it's kind of hilarious what independent experts think. I hope you're proud of your endorsee, Speaker Pelosi. And I hope the rest of these groups come out forcefully against Wynn, mocking him mercilessly for his nonsensical claims. Let's go through the problems.
First of all, the complaint is signed by Lori Sherwood, Al Wynn's campaign manager and a former Comcast lobbyist. Here's Wynn in the Baltimore Sun.
"There seems to be a vast, dare I say, left-wing conspiracy designed to circumvent campaign finance laws," Wynn told reporters during a conference call. "Within this scheme, her supporters are coordinating efforts to exceed fundraising limits and engaging in illegal campaign activities."...
An attorney with the independent Campaign Legal Center in Washington who was asked by The Sun to review the complaint said it didn't appear to contain any facts that would constitute illegal collaboration.
"Interestingly, and unlike most complaints filed with the Federal Election Commission, there's not a single provision of federal campaign finance law directly cited in the complaint," attorney Paul Ryan said. "Several of the allegations, in my view, make clear the complainant doesn't really have a clear understanding of what constitutes coordination under federal law."
And then there's the campaign problem, where Wynn radically underreports the amount of money he's taking in. On his original July 15th Quarterly Report, Wynn reported receiving $61,582.69 in contributions between April 1, 2006 and June 30, 2006. Two days later, he filed an amended report saying he actually received $107,132.69 - almost double what he originally reported. Two weeks later he filed yet another version of his July 15th Quarterly Report saying he actually raised $157,275.69. Last week the FEC sent a letter asking him to explain these discrepancies and threatening an audit of his political committee....
His willingness to tangle with the FEC and flout campaign finance laws is not new. In 2000, Wynn was forced to return contributions from MSFBDA Management Group, a company that laundered money through its employees to Wynn...
There's more. That year, Wynn's campaign was one of 45 campaigns that failed to file a pre-General election report. In 2001, he was fined for filing his report late.
And let's not even go near the massive electoral problems in the 2006 primary election. There's also a lot more nasty stuff on Wynn out there, and it hasn't come out yet. I imagine he's going to get really personal and vicious; he's already accused nearly a dozen powerful, important, and extremely lawyered-up and careful progressive groups of lawbreaking.
Let's get rid of this guy. Donna needs volunteers and money, especially volunteers (which you can do from anywhere as long as you have a broadband connection)! Sign up here or go through Blue Majority.
UPDATE: And let's not forget Al Wynn's fake news video, which you can tell is produced by Wynn's campaign not because it's disclosed as campaign material, but because it is an incredibly shitty and incoherent production. It of course was taken down immediately, though I did manage to grab a copy and upload it for posterity.
I just got an e-mail from LCV, which just launched an incredibly cool campaign to push the media to focus more on climate change. Check out this incredible fact from their research:
We analyzed the transcripts from all the debates and Sunday interviews that these top reporters--Tim Russert, George Stephanopoulos, Wolf Blitzer, Bob Schieffer, and Chris Wallace--have hosted.
Even we were shocked by what we found:
Between the Sunday shows and debates, these five reporters have interviewed the candidates 126 times in 2007. They have asked the candidates 2,275 questions. In that time, the words "global warming" and "climate change" have only been mentioned in 3 questions. Three. All year. Even if you include global warming related questions such as fuel efficiency and oil subsidies, it is only 24. There have nearly been more presidential candidates this year then questions about global warming.
Now that is truly absurd. If Gore and virtually every scientist who has studied this are right, are even half-right, climate change will be the most catastrophic thing that has ever happened to the human race, and we don't have long to change things before we reach the point of no return. And none of these reporters is even asking about the issue? Insanity...
UPDATE: Yup, I just got off the phone with reporter John McArdle. He was quoting the Wynn letter and didn't check the LCV public scorecard. He won't issue a correction until he hears back from the LCV, so I've emailed Gene Karpinski and Tony Massaro over there for comment. I don't think LCV is going to be happy about this.
Here's Tony Massaro, LCV spokesperson.
Matt, Rep. Wynn continues to get the facts wrong. He has an 85 lifetime., 77 in the 109th Congress which includes support for the 2005 energy bill, one of the most anti-environmental pieces of legislation to pass the House in the last 20 years and a 92 in 2006, none of which are 96 as you correctly point out. More to the point, in all his years in Congress he as not been an environmental leader, while Donna has been a citizen leader on the environment for the past 30 plus years.
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Aside from beating up Donna Edwards volunteers, spreading nasty rumors, and playing around with voting machines, one of Al Wynn's consistent models of operating last cycle was to simply lie about endorsements and rely on the low information environment by the local press. I think it's happening again. There was a story in Roll call about Al Wynn complaining that the League of Conservation voters is endorsing his opponent, Donna Edwards. The accusation is that Donna was involved in the foundation world, and LCV was a grantee of the foundation she ran. But the real story seems hidden in plain site. Here's Wynn:
"As you know, in this Congress I was elected Chair of the Environment and Hazardous Materials Subcommittee, and based on the 96 rating I received from the League of Conservation Voters during the prior Congress and my strong record on environmental matters, I feel that I deserve to receive an endorsement from the League," he wrote.
I checked out Progressive Punch, and there are a whole lot of bad votes on the environment from Wynn, the most prominent one being the Bush Energy Bill. Obviously he's taken money from the nuclear industry and everyone else in the energy world. So then I checked out the LCV scorecard from 2006, and Wynn scored a 77. Am I missing something? Or did Wynn just out and out lie about his score to Roll Call reporter John McArdle?
If he did, it's not the first time he's openly dishonest in a manner where he's sure to be caught. Here he was last cycle, lying about who endorsed him.
The latest example was a "Women for Wynn" mailing that included Montgomery County council member Marilyn Praisner (D-Eastern County) in a list of more than 70 supporters.
In an interview, Praisner said Wynn had contacted her directly seeking permission to use her name. She said no.
But "I got one in the mail, and it has my name on it," Praisner said.
Late yesterday afternoon, Wynn said he called Praisner to apologize for what he said was a clerical error.
At least two labor unions -- the Service Employees International Union and the Teamsters -- also have raised questions about Wynn's use of their names on his literature.
Wynn lists the two groups among about 40 that "want to send Al Wynn back to Congress."
"We were surprised that our name was on the literature," said Ellen Golombek , director of government affairs for SEIU.
Curt Clifton , a spokesman for Wynn, said Wynn received contributions from the union and the Teamsters with letters of support for his reelection bid. Golombek said she was looking into whether a check was sent to Wynn last year; none were sent in 2006, she said.
She added that the union "elected not to endorse in this congressional race."
Ferline Buie , president of Teamsters Joint Council No. 55, which represents five local unions in the 4th District, sent a letter to Wynn's campaign Friday asking that his literature be corrected because the union has endorsed Edwards.
This is odd. I almost can't believe what Wynn's campaign said about this. Am I missing something here?
So, there's been a lot said on here in the past about who was the best candidate on the environment. A lot of people have said Edwards, in fact, there was a diary on the rec list yesterday about how Gore should endorse him.
Well, the League of Conservation Voters thinks he'd choose Obama. Here's their rankings, based on their votes in congress and their profiles they personally submitted to the group:
You can go here: http://presidentialprofiles2008.org/ to see the numbers and read their profiles. I don't know about you, but I choose substance over rhetoric, and I trust the league of conservation voters quite a bit.
So, it would seem that based on actual votes in congress, Obama is your choice. If Obama is your choice, and you can spare some change, consider donating. Your donation can be as small as $5. Thanks.
