True Colors: Senator Kent Conrad Votes To Let The EPA Kill The Coal Industry

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Written By:
Rob Port

Jun 23, 2012
11:03am

Throughout most of his career, North Dakota Democrat Senator Kent Conrad was known as a coal-friendly legislator, and why wouldn’t he? Coal may not be North Dakota’s #1 industry, but it is a very important industry, and one that has a profound impact on the state’s economy by providing some of the lowest electrical rates in the nation.

But Senator Conrad is on his way out. He’s in the last year of his last term in the Senate, and his voting record this year seems to be reflecting that.

Senator Jim Inhofe brought before the Senate a bill that would have stopped EPA regulations putting a significant number of coal plants out of business, raising electricity prices and killing jobs (Phil Kerpen has more). When the votes were tallied, freshman Republican Senator John Hoeven voted for the amendment and to protect coal.

The outgoing Senator Conrad broke with his traditionally coal-friendly record and help the Democrat majority vote it down. It lost 53 – 46 (it needed 60 votes to pass).

This just goes to show that Conrad’s position on coal was always about political expediency. Now that he needn’t worry about getting elected ever again, he’s free to vote with the far-left majority of his party.

As federal Democrat candidates in North Dakota – Senate candidate Heidi Heitkamp and House candidate Pam Gulleson – put on the costumes of energy-friendly moderates, one can’t help but wonder if they aren’t playing the same game.