Pombo Joins 2010 Dirty Dozen
Every election year, the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) elects to their “Dirty Dozen” list twelve members of Congress who “consistently vote against the environment and are up for re-election in races where LCV has a serious chance to affect the outcome.” On Monday, LCV announced that they were bestowing upon Richard Pombo (R – CA) the great honor of becoming 2010’s third Dirty Dozen member.
He’s a Dirty Dozen re-elect – having been a prominent member of the LCV’s 2006 list – and he’s on track to outdo himself on abysmal environmental policy if California re-elects him this year, too. He spent three terms speaking for California’s 11th district from 1993 to 2007, and is now running for the 19th district.
From California League of Conservation Voters CEO Warner Chabot: “No California member of Congress has been more knee-jerk anti-environmental than Richard Pombo. There’s no better candidate than Pombo for the Dirty Dozen list.”
Pombo has worked hard to earn himself such recognition, and it shows; he’s everything you want in an astonishingly environmentally ruinous candidate. He’s all for off-shore drilling, of course (read this letter Gov. Schwarzenegger wrote to Pombo in 2006). A given, and not too creative an effort on his part to destroy our climate. More innovatively, while on duty for district 11, he suggested that the government cash in on mama nature, sell 15 of our national parks, and turn them into revenue-generating machines. Conservationists had to fight for an entire century to establish our country’s national parks, and Pombo barreled in and nearly sold them in a heartbeat – some of our last precious quasi-wild spaces. A true testament to his Dirty Dozen status.
Also critical to his soaring Dirty Dozen status is the fact that Pombo is not opposed to taking money from America’s dirty energy industries to get himself elected to help run an America which increasingly says it wants to come clean on energy. He’s accepted almost $700,000 from the oil industry and $220,000 from lobbyists to fund his campaigns. And he’s pro oil subsidies, to boot! He helped George W pass $21 billion in oil subsidies through in the 2005 Energy Bill.
All of this hard work adds up to a League of Conservation Voters lifetime environmental score of 7% for Pombo. He shares his honor with the LCV’s first two elected 2010 Dirty Dozen members: Senator Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) and former Congressman Steve Pearce (R-NM).
