Posted on 07/31/2012 6:36:51 AM PDT by SoConPubbie
Romney and his super PAC have taken millions from funders with strong green streaks — despite the fact that the former Massachusetts governor has run to the right in the primary, proclaiming doubts about global-warming science and trashing President Barack Obama’s greenhouse gas emissions policies.
Julian Robertson, founder of the Tiger Management hedge fund, helped put cap-and-trade legislation on the map with $60 million in contributions over the past decade to the Environmental Defense Fund.
Now, Robertson has given $1.25 million to Romney’s Restore our Future super PAC, plus the maximum $2,500 to the Romney campaign.
Other green-minded financial backers may not be giving as much as Robertson, but they still share the view that climate-change science and a solid environmental agenda wouldn’t be a lost cause if Romney won the White House.
“My feeling is that on these issues that people learn,” said former Gov. Thomas Kean (R-N.J.), who maxed out last fall to Romney with a $2,500 check. “And my hope is, as time goes on, he will understand that not everybody agrees on how you deal with these issues, but I hope he will agree with 99 percent of the scientists who believe this is an issue that we have to deal with.”
As president, Kean said he hoped Romney could duplicate his Beacon Hill successes in building coalitions with Democrats on issues such as energy and the environment. In addition, Kean noted that Romney wouldn’t face the same gridlocked climate debate of recent years, in large part because of the boom in domestic natural gas production that’s helped lower the nation’s greenhouse gas emission levels. “The whole game has changed,” Kean said.
Rob Sisson, president of the Republicans for Environmental Protection, said he’s scraping together personal funds to write a check to the Romney campaign after getting a chance to meet him for the first time last month during a town hall campaign stop in Kalamazoo, Mich.
“I think his record as governor was pretty good as far as Republicans go,” said Sisson, who also gave $1,000 last June to Jon Huntsman’s campaign. “I really get the sense from him and the folks around him with whom I’ve spoken that as president he’d really look at each situation, gather the data and really make a decision that’s best for the country.”
“If that goes against the grain of how he’s campaigning now, so be it,” Sisson added. “He’s going to be driven by data and facts and not emotions and getting pushed into one corner by one faction of the party.”
Among the other green Romney donors is Texas businessman and philanthropist Trammell S. Crow, founder of Earth Day Dallas and winner of the Republicans for Environmental Protection’s Green Elephant Award in 2007. Crow and his family have given $71,000 this cycle to Republicans, including $15,000 to the Republican National Committee and $5,000 to Romney, according to donation data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.
“I am voting for Mitt Romney and I believe in global warming,” Crow said in a statement to POLITICO.
Of course, for every green-minded GOP donor, there’s a large segment of supporters pushing Romney in another direction on energy issues. Campaigning Thursday in North Dakota, Romney tapped Harold Hamm, an Oklahoma oil billionaire and a major GOP contributor, to head his campaign’s energy advisory panel. There’s also William Koch, founder of Oxbow Corp., a West Palm Beach, Fla.-based energy firm that’s given $1 million to Romney’s super PAC.
A former George W. Bush administration energy official unaffiliated with any campaign said green-minded donors won’t change Romney’s message. “If he were getting contributions from some of the guys who contribute to our president, some of the street activists, Bill Ayers, I’d be worried. But that doesn’t worry me,” the official said.
Others are raising expectations because of heavy-hitting Republican donors such as Robertson.
Continue Reading Text Size - + reset Listen “If for some climate advocates the influence of money in politics does not give pause, then such advocates can hope that Robertson will use his access and influence with the Romney team to shift the candidate’s position on climate change should Romney win the GOP nomination, and especially if he makes it to the White House,” American University professor Matthew Nisbet wrote last month on his blog.
If Romney won, Nisbet concluded that Robertson’s role as an EDF trustee and major donor “should give the organization significant access to the Oval Office.”
Robertson isn’t trying to buy access, said his spokesman Fraser Seitel.
“The reasons he’s supporting Romney are very simple,” Seitel said. “In his view, Romney is smart enough, moral enough and fit enough to run the country.”
“In terms of the environment and climate-change controls, which he does believe is one of the most important issues the country and the world faces, he has confidence that Romney, once he’s in there, will do the right thing,” Seitel added.
Green-minded donors have also shelled out to other GOP presidential candidates this cycle.
Former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, a longtime Nature Conservancy board member, gave the maximum $2,500 to Huntsman last summer. Former White House Counsel C. Boyden Gray gave $2,500 to Huntsman and then followed up with the same amount in January to Romney after Huntsman left the race. Bill Doré, a semi-retired energy consultant, has donated more than $1 million to the super PAC boosting Rick Santorum’s presidential campaign.
Doré made his fortune in the pipeline and offshore drilling equipment business. But for years, Doré, now 69, also butted heads with the oil and gas industry in his native Louisiana. Not only did he sue multiple oil companies for polluting 9,000 acres of marshland he had leased to them for drilling, but he also was a leading backer of bills in the Louisiana Legislature to protect other landowners’ ability to file similar so-called legacy site suits.
“I am absolutely sure that he lost friends over that,” said Butch Gautreaux, a former Democratic state senator who sponsored legislation on the issue backed by Doré.
Gautreaux, who received at least $2,500 in campaign contributions from Doré, told POLITICO that Doré “not only put himself on the line, but he also spent a lot of money doing engineering studies backing what he was alleging at the time.”
Before this year, Doré had given $637,000 in federal and state contributions, split about equally between the parties. His biggest contributions had been to the Republican Governors Association ($50,000 in 2010) and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee ($28,500 in 2008) — which, interestingly, had helped defeat Santorum in 2006.
Doré did not respond to repeated requests for comment about his political views or motivation for donating to the super PAC supporting Santorum, who has pushed for expanded oil drilling and hydraulic fracturing to extract natural gas.
But Gautreaux, who said he considers himself “good friends” with Doré, called him “an oil and gas environmentalist” and said his political involvement is motivated by a sense of “doing what you believe is the right thing to do for the right reason.”
Why do you avoid Romney’s record?
Hypocrisy, ynot, is bad-mouthing your own team for holding to the same thing you yourself was selling just a few short months ago. You should be ashamed of yourself, not for deciding you had to support Romney because you saw him as your only choice, but for turning in a mean-spirited way on those who decided differently, but who you had considered your friends.
For those of us in the resistance, there is no way to spin Romney as a conservative. It simply is not possible. And we are not the ones who have changed what we believe.
My message to you is to learn a bit of graciousness and reconsider your attacks on those who will still have your back when you return to your senses.
Your support for Obama while pretending you care about conservative principles makes no sense, no way, no how. I should want you to “have my back”? for what? So that you can put a knife in it. Do you know where I want weak links? Nowhere! The path to success is a twisted one. The path to failure is direct and is the path you weak-linkers have chosen, have a nice trip. We Patriots are busy trying to removie your man from the White house, our children and grand children are depending on us.
And your post proves you to be graceless.
Hypocrite.
You think you are on my team? You are part of the obama spamming posse. You are lying about “what I was selling” a few months ago. I have been very consistent since 1980. I will fight for the most conservative person in the the Primary then support the nominee. I would never, ever, ever do anything that might keep Obama in the White house. My parents didn’t raise me to be a Benedict Arnold.
It's there for everyone to see.
And if anyone is an Obama agent, it's people like you and the GOP-E, who put forward a candidate they know conservatives won't support, so that they discourage and divide them. That way your candidate, Obama, gets the win.
If you put forward someone who will divide conservatives, and won't win, then you are supporting his opponent.
Not only are you an Obama-loving, socialist-loving,baby killing, gay backing, gun grabbing, obamacare loving, big government liberal. You are also a hypocrite, a turncoat, and an agent of evil pushing slavery on this country.
Get thee hence, satanos!
You are still talking about everything else but Romney’s record why?
You are part of the obama spamming posse. Just about everybody here supported somebody other than Romney this year and I was one of them. Only about a dozen or so { Svcw, so_real, Finney, Yashcheritsiy, Fishtank, muawiyah, SoConPubbie, Tennessee Nana, xzins, ForAmerica, RitaOK, Cripplecreek } are actively trying to help B. Hussein Obama get reelected for 4 more years as a way of punishing the 10 million Republican voters for giving him the nomination, even if that means the destruction of the Republic. You are as un-American as the man you wish to occupy the White house for the next 4 years. Your names will go down in the Hall of Shame for your pride and selfishness.
I see you didn't have the decency to ping people you were bad-mouthing.
And I also see you didn't have the courage to mention Jim Robinson, the biggest rebel of us all. The head of the posse, so to speak.
I repeat, ynot, your slamming Romney as a big-time liberal and then attacking those who actually believed that is nothing short of crystal clear hypocrisy.
And, I also repeat, if you push a man (Romney) you know will split your forces, then you are actually an agent for the enemy (Obama).
You are stooge for Obama.
For the last time, quit trying to compare your self with JimRob or trying to hide behind him. Speak for yourself. He made it very, very clear when he didn’t want to hear any pro Romney stuff under his roof last last year. Circumstances changed, Romney became our last chance to stop Obama and he knew most of us had no where else to go so he gave us permission to express our desire to rid our great Republic of this Progressive Communist President.
Maybe I had you wrong, maybe you are just a useful idiot. In political jargon, useful idiot is a pejorative term used to describe people perceived as propagandists for a cause whose goals they do not understand, who are used cynically by the leaders (Chicago) of the cause, especially those who are seen to unwittingly support a malignant cause which they naively believe to be a force for good. You will now be ignored. Have a nice life.
I SUE YOU BATARDE
LESS THAN 20% ain't no thang ~ you can't win an election with those kinda' numbers. Ain't no way this bad by is a real Republican candidate.
Leni
I work with Americans For Prosperity, we are the Tea Party and not one single person who hits the phone and street agrees with you, We are all working our *ss off to get Obama out. Chicago wants to keep Obama in the WH and agrees with you, that is what makes you a “useful idiot”. Think about it, you are supporting the re-election of Obama because you are pro-citizen, pro-life, pro-defense, pro-independence, pro-limited-government, pro-family, pro-Constitutional, and pro-God. Sounds like you need some pro-zak.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.