Blanche Lincoln’s Revolving Door

Photo by John Fraissinet, <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/jfraissi/3680843850/">via Flickr</a>.

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Blanche Lincoln’s support for a measure to block the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating planet-warming gases has put her at the top the list of electoral targets of environmental groups this year. They’ve highlighted Lincoln’s ties to big polluters—she’s been the top recipient of oil and gas money in the Senate since 2005. And her current and former staffers are also closely tied to polluting interests, as Paul Blumenthal highlights over at the Sunlight Foundation.

As Blumenthal points out, at least six of Lincoln’s former staffers currently lobby for major players in the climate debate, including trade groups for the oil and gas industry, agricultural interests, the airplane industry and biofuels. They include Kelly Bingel, Lincoln’s former chief of staff and now a lobbyist for Mehlman Vogel Castagnetti, which represents the American Petroleum Institute and Koch Industries, one of the country’s largest oil manufacturing, trading and investment companies. Both API and Koch have opposed efforts to address climate change—with API orchestrating astroturf “Energy Citizen” rallies, while Koch has funded major conservative groups like FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity. Ben Noble, another former staffer, lobbies for a number of agricultural interests opposed to climate legislation, including the USA Rice Federation.

The door to Lincoln’s office also spins the other direction, something not noted in the Sunlight post. In December she hired Julie Anna Potts to serve as her chief counsel for the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, which Lincoln chairs. Potts most recently served as general counsel for the American Farm Bureau Federation. The farm lobby in general and AFB in particular have vehemently opposed climate legislation—going so far as to deny that emissions are even a problem.

Lincoln has made it plain that she doesn’t intend to vote for climate legislation anytime soon—she even touted her opposition last week in her first TV ad for the primary. Cap and trade, she has said, is a “complete non-starter.”

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate