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WASHINGTON, DC – The League of Conservation Voters (LCV) today announced a nearly $625,000 multi-media advertising campaign calling on Senators to put people first and reject the big polluter agenda that has been the hallmark of Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s first 100 days as leader. The campaign includes television and digital ads in the Washington, DC metropolitan market.

“Under Mitch McConnell’s leadership, the Senate has seen an all-out effort to dismantle clean air and climate change safeguards, as well as attacks on protections for clean water, public lands and wildlife,” said Tiernan Sittenfeld, Senior Vice President for Government Affairs at LCV.  “After his first 100 days as Senate Majority Leader one thing is clear: the big polluters and their allies who invested $721 million to influence congress are getting exactly what they hoped for.”

The ad highlights big polluter spending on elections and lobbying and illustrates McConnell’s extreme agenda, including his intent to stop the Clean Power Plan.  The Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan would set the first-ever national limits on carbon pollution from the nation’s power plants, the leading source of the pollution that fuels climate change.  Script and backup here.

The first 100 days of the McConnell Senate have been a series of votes that read like the wish list of big polluters, but has also provided some insight into some changing dynamics, particularly on climate and public lands, which revealed splits between extreme Republican leaders and some of their rank-and-file members.  Indeed the very first bill of 2015—to force approval of the dirty and dangerous Keystone XL Pipeline—gave such a clear picture, including some promising bright spots, of where Senators now stand on the shifting politics of climate change and clean energy that LCV took the unusual step of releasing a Special Edition Scorecard.

The television ads premiered during the national Sunday morning public affairs shows on April 12 including NBC’s Meet the Press, ABC’s This Week, CBS’ Face the Nation and Fox News Sunday and will continue for 2 weeks in the metropolitan DC television market, concluding on April 25. A concurrent digital campaign will run the week of April 13 urging people to tell their Senator to put people before polluters. 

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