8/19/2016

Meet Hillary Clintons Oil-And-Gas Donors

Meet Hillary Clintons Oil-And-Gas

Donors
Advocates want her to dump their money, but the donors say theres no foul play.

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AP Photo/Mary Altaffer

} April 4, 2016, 8 p.m.

Jason Plautz
@JASON_PLAUTZ

en. Bernie Sanders and environmental activists are bludgeoning

Hillary Clinton for accepting campaign cash from the oil-and-gas

industry, claiming that it raises questions about her commitment to protecting the environment.
One of those oil-and-gas donors at the center of the controversy is Curt

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Moffatt. Hes a counsel for Kinder Morgan, the nations largest energy-

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infrastructure company. But Moffatt has also been a loyal Democrat

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since the Carter administration, and credits a Bill Clinton health care
policy with enabling his first wife to get a necessary bone-marrow transplant to treat her breast cancer. With that in mind, Moffatt donated the

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maximum $2,700 to her presidential campaign.

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8/19/2016
Oil
hillary clinton
Greenpeace
Industry
Lobbying

Meet Hillary Clintons Oil-And-Gas Donors

In total, Clinton has netted $307,651 from employees of oil-andgas companies, along with more than $1 million from lobbyists and
bundlers tied to the industry. The flap blew up last week when a Greenpeace activist confronted Clinton over the donations, prompting Clinton

Gas

to respond that she was so sick of the Sanders campaign lying.

Fossil fuel

Moffatt said his employer has no bearing on his donation, which was a

Business

personal decision.

Democratic Party
Policy

She has a strong sense of how policy is made, including moving to a less

Company

fossil-intensive industry, said Moffatt, whos been a counsel for Kinder

Natural environment

Morgan since 2014 and had represented affiliates of the companies for

Climate

decades prior.

Marathon Petroleum
Kinder Morgan

The Center for Responsive Politics, which compiles donation informa-

Environmentalism

tion, classifies oil-and-gas donations as coming from anyone who lists

Energy industry

anoil-and-gascompany as their employer, but does not discriminate by

ExxonMobil

position. Sanders himself has netted $54,000, but Republicans have gotten nearly 50 times as much.TheWashingtonPostfact-checkersaid the
Sanders campaign was exaggerating Clintons contributions and that it
was especially misleading to include funds from lobbyists.
Clinton has not gotten money from the industrys top executives, nor has
she drawn from the fossil-fuel industrys political action committees. In-

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stead, that $307,000 has come from people like Dayna Salter of Houston, who has donated $50 a month to the campaign since July. FEC filings list Salters employer as oil giant ExxonMobil, although she retired
from the company over the summer and now works as a part-time adjunct instructor for Lone Star College.
Im supporting her as an individual, it has nothing to do with ExxonMobil, Salter said. They were my employer for 15 years and thats it.
Im an individual person.
Environmental activists have been pushing Clinton to sign a pledge rejecting donations from top oil-and-gas executives and lobbyists, saying
that money could influence her climate policies (Sanders did sign such a
pledge).
Among those lobbyists is Tom Lawler of Lawler Strategies,flagged by a
Greenpeace report because his firm works with Virginia-based energy
firm Dominion Resources. In an interview, Lawler said his $2,700 contribution is a donation by me, not a donation for companies I work with
or for.

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8/19/2016

Meet Hillary Clintons Oil-And-Gas Donors

Theres this notion of putting people in a box, that youre part of the
fossil-fuel industry, but if you dig down even a little bit, you realize its
not that clear cut, Lawler said. Lawler, a former aide to Delaware
Democratic Sen.ThomasCarper, also works for the International Emissions Trading Association, an alliance including energy interest that promotes carbon trading.
Greenpeace also highlighted donations from four lobbyists with the firm
Forbes-Tate, which has worked with oil giant Hess. Jeffrey Forbes, a
founding partner and Clinton donor, said in an email that it was disingenuous for [Sanders] to think Secretary Clinton is beholden to me or
any lobbyist.
I make donations because I am a Democrat who likes to see Democrats
win, he said, adding that he contributed to Sanderss 2006 Senate campaign while representing a clean-energy coalition with several power
companies.
The controversy has even roped in high-profile Democrats such
asformer Missouri Democratic Rep. Dick Gephardt, a DNC superdelegate pledged to Clinton who is named by Greenpeace because his firm
lobbies for coal company Peabody Energy. Some activists have pointed
to former Indiana governor andSen.Evan Bayh, a fundraiser for Clinton

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who also sits on the board of Marathon Petroleum. Bayh told National
Journal that Marathon Petroleum is a spinoff from Marathon Oil that
focuses on refining and transportation, not exploration, and that he also
has never mentioned a single word of energy policy to anyone associated with the Clinton campaign.
The flare-up reflects a broader debate in the environmental community
over whether Clinton will go as far on fossil fuels as Sanders. Although
Clinton has strengthened her climate policies in recent monthscoming
out against Atlantic offshore drilling and supporting policies that would
severely restrict frackingshe still hasnt passed muster with those who
want to stop all fossil-fuel extraction. Her work promoting natural gas at
the State Department and her initial reticence to come out against the
Keystone XL pipeline give some advocates pause.
OnMeetthePresson Sunday, Clinton said she has been working to try
to move us away from fossil fuels for many years.
Charlie Cray, a researcher with Greenpeace, said highlighting donations
are another way to put pressure on her, although he admitted that individual contributions from low-level employees arent a deal-breaker.

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8/19/2016

Meet Hillary Clintons Oil-And-Gas Donors

You want employees to have the right to express their own political
opinions, he said. We are just citing this number, were not saying that
it is equivalent to what were asking for.
If she took the pledge, her campaign could very well do due diligence on
any contributions that come in and decide whether its a top executive or
not, Cray added.
Several high-profile Democrats have sought to defuse the tension. New
York City mayor Bill de Blasio, speaking for the Clinton campaign, said
the allegations didnt hold water. California Democratic Sen. Barbara
Boxer wrote on Twitter on Friday that Both Hillary and Bernie accepted
donations from fossil-fuel workers, and both care deeply about the environment, adding, the last thing we need is for the Democratic race,
which we have been so proud of, to devolve into GOP-style mudslinging.
Lawler said the debate reminded him oftea-party tactics on the right in a
push for a purity test.
That Hillary is somehow less of a Democrat because she has a conversation with someone who has different opinions of her, thats a slippery
slope, Lawler said. We can see what happened on the other side, that
the tent is getting smaller, not bigger.

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