WASHINGTON – Ahead of the first debate in the Oregon Senate race, the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) today announced the addition of Oregon Republican Senate candidate Monica Wehby to LCV’s trademark Dirty Dozen program this cycle. The Dirty Dozen targets candidates — regardless of party affiliation — who consistently side against the environment and are running in races in which LCV has a serious chance to affect the outcome. Last election cycle, LCV defeated 11 of the 12 Dirty Dozen candidates. 

“Monica Wehby has claimed that EPA’s proposal to reduce carbon pollution would harm Oregon’s forests, even though scientists predict that climate change will spur more ferocious wildfires. She’s sided with corporate polluters and the oil billionaire Koch Brothers, and would continue doing their bidding if she gets to the Senate,” said Daniel J. Weiss, LCV Senior Vice President for Campaigns.

As the Huffington Post reported, “Webhy’s policy platform … is lining up squarely with that of the Kochs. The Oregonian, a Portland newspaper, recently posted a series of articles detailing the positions of Wehby and Sen. Jeff Merkley (D) on 14 Senate votes from the past six years. … On every vote where the Koch-backed tea party group Americans for Prosperity took a position — eight of the 14 — Webhy sided with the Kochs.” 

Like the Koch brothers front group Americans for Prosperity, Wehby is adamantly opposed to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) taking any action to reduce the carbon pollution responsible for climate change. She told the Oregonian that she would have supported a 2010 a Congressional Review Act disapproval resolution that would have overturned the EPA’s “endangerment finding.” Had it passed, it would have prevented the EPA from taking the necessary steps under the Clean Air Act to address climate change pollution. Sen. Jeff Merkley, her opponent, voted against this anti-climate action measure.  

The resolution would have dismantled clean vehicles standards and blocked new commonsense safeguards protecting the air we breathe and the water we drink from global warming pollution from some of our country’s biggest polluters. Wehby even claimed that these EPA carbon pollution standards “would have further harmed our forests.” 

In reality, it is unmitigated climate change that threatens forests with pest outbreaks and more intense and frequent wildfires, and EPA climate policies such as its proposed Clean Power Plan that are seeking to address these threats. Polling conducted for LCV shows significant, nationwide support for the EPA’s proposed carbon pollution standards, and independent, nationwide polling also shows strong support for the plan, including a Washington Post-ABC News poll that found that a “lopsided and bipartisan majority of Americans support federal limits on greenhouse gas emissions.”

In contrast, Senator Merkley has earned a 100% lifetime score on LCV’s National Environmental Scorecard. The non-partisan Scorecard is a nationally accepted yardstick used to rate members of Congress on environmental and clean energy issues. Based on key environmental votes in the House and Senate, it is often used by the media to quickly describe a Member’s record. For more information, visit https://scorecard.lcv.org.   

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Paid for by the League of Conservation Voters, www.lcv.org, and not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.