North Dakota Democrat Email List Members Get Anti-Oil Fundraising Pitches
North Dakota Democrats walk a fine line on energy issues in North Dakota. Nationally, Democrats (up to and including President Barack Obama) are very much anti-oil and anti-coal. But here in North Dakota, both fuels are important to the economy. Not only that, North Dakotans are aware that those resources can be safely and responsibly developed.
So when the Democrats in the state attack on the energy front, they blame Republican leadership and not, specifically, the development of oil and coal. They stress that they are not anti-oil or anti-coal.
Because they know campaigning against those things in North Dakota is a good way to remain in the political wilderness they currently find themselves in.
What’s interesting is that, in this election cycle, North Dakota Dems seem to be allowing their email list to be used by an anti-oil group called Envrionmental Majority, which according to the Center for Responsive Politics is a “Super PAC” that, though it doesn’t seem to have spent a lot of money so far in 2014, has spent some in support of Senator Ed Markey.
You know, the co-author of the controversial Waxman-Markey cap and trade legislation.
Below are seven emails received by a reader who is on the Democrat mailing list. The content is about what you’d expect. The emails accuse various Republicans of being in the pocket of “Big Oil” or the Koch brothers, and suggests they “deny the existence of climate change.” All rhetoric that might appeal to the Democrats’ liberal base, but aren’t going to fly with a majority in North Dakota.
The reader’s email is only used for that list, and the formatting of the Environmental Majority emails matches exactly the formatting used in emails sent out by North Dakota Democrats. So either North Dakota Dems are sending out these emails to their list on behalf of Environmental Majority, or they sold their list.
Either way, it undermines arguments from Democrats that they aren’t “anti-oil” when they’re working with a group like this.
