What To Know Before The Vote: Gardner, Daines “Have Backed Trump’s Anti-Conservation Agenda at Every Turn”

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell plans to hold a late-night vote on a public lands measure to boost two of his most vulnerable incumbents, a stunt that has exposed how Senators Cory Gardner and Steve Daines “are relatively new to the fight” to protect our public lands and “have backed Trump’s anti-conservation agenda at every turn.”  

HuffPost details today how the vulnerable incumbents’ newfound support for the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF), which will be fully funded as part of the Great American Outdoors Act, is nothing more than an election-year turn. Both senators have voted to cut funding from the LWCF, and neither has spoken out against acting director of the Bureau of Land Management William Perry Pendley, a noted anti-public lands and anti-environment advocate; Daines has even said he’d support Pendley in a Senate confirmation process. Gardner also refuses to support the House-passed CORE Act, which would protect 400,000 acres of land in Colorado. And as the Trump administration has rolled back public lands and environmental protections, Gardner and Daines have been silent. Gardner and Daines have earned lifetime scores of 11% and 6%, respectively, from the League of Conservation Voters and “neither have particularly notable environmental records.” 

“Less than five months before Election Day, Senators Gardner and Daines are suddenly attempting to greenwash their abysmal anti-conservation records to try to save their struggling re-election campaigns,” said DSCC spokesperson Helen Kalla. “Senator Gardner and Senator Daines have long histories of failing to stand up for our public lands, and this election-year political gift from their Washington party bosses won’t fool voters.”

HuffPost: In An Election Year, 2 Vulnerable GOP Senators Are Suddenly Conservationists

By Chris D’Angelo

Key Points:

• Public lands activists and a handful of lawmakers have long pushed for full, permanent funding of the Land and Water Conservation Fund, a federal program established in 1964 that uses offshore oil and gas revenues to establish and protect parks, wildlife refuges, forests and wildlife habitat.

• Now two vulnerable Republicans are among those championing a bipartisan conservation bill that would permanently and fully fund the LWCF, as well as allocate $9.5 billion to address the mounting maintenance backlog at America’s national parks. Sens. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) and Cory Gardner (R-Colo.), co-sponsors of the bill, are claiming credit for the win after the bill advanced by an 80-17 vote this week. A vote on final passage is expected early next week.

• Trump has not been shy about who he thinks should get credit for this moment.

• “I am calling on Congress to send me a Bill that fully and permanently funds the LWCF and restores our National Parks,” Trump wrote in a March post to Twitter. “When I sign it into law, it will be HISTORIC for our beautiful public lands. ALL thanks to @SenCoryGardner and @SteveDaines, two GREAT Conservative Leaders!”

• It’s a message he and his team are sure to push between now and November.

• Both Daines and Gardner are relatively new to the fight to protect the LWCF, and neither have particularly notable environmental records ― earning lifetime scores from the League of Conservation Voters of 6% and 11%, respectively.

• Gardner, while a member of the House of Representatives in 2011, voted in favor of an amendment to an appropriations bill that would have drastically cut the LWCF’s already low funding. In 2015, Daines voted against reauthorizing the program. And in June 2018, hours after participating in a press conference calling for full and permanent LWCF funding, they both voted in favor of a spending cuts package that, among other things, would have slashed $16 million in LWCF funds from the U.S. Forest Service.

• […] but it’s hard not to see Trump’s newfound support as little more than a gift to two Senate allies facing tough bids for reelection. Daines is facing Montana’s Democratic governor and former 2020 presidential candidate Steve Bullock, and Gardner is likely to square off against former Colorado governor and 2020 presidential contender John Hickenlooper. Roll Call named Gardner the most vulnerable Republican senator in 2020.

• “It is a desperate attempt to convince their constituents that they aren’t working on behalf of corporations and that they care about what the American people care about,” said Jayson O’Neill, director of public lands watchdog group Western Values Project.

• The oil and gas sector has been a top-five contributing industry to both Daines and Gardner over their careers, according to Center for Responsive Politics data.

• The administration has led the largest rollback of national monuments in U.S. history, carving out more than 2 million acres from a pair of protected national monuments in Utah, and last week opening a 5,000-square-mile marine sanctuary off the East Coast to commercial fishing. It has weakened key conservation laws that protect land, water and air, including the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act. And it has repeatedly hosted anti-federal-land advocates and even tapped fierce critics of federal land management for powerful government posts.

• Supporting Trump and his anti-conservation agenda at seemingly every turn have been Gardner and Daines. Daines even signaled he’d back William Perry Pendley, the acting director of the Bureau of Land Management who has extreme anti-environmental views and spent his career lobbying for the sale of federal lands, if Trump were to officially nominate him for the post. Gardner has so far avoided taking a stand on Pendley, but touted his relationship with Trump and his own role in the administration’s controversial decision to move BLM headquarters to Colorado.

Read the full story here.

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