J.D. Vance and the GOP ticket are closing strong in the campaign’s homestretch.
But they’re going to need a few breaks along the way.
And J.D. Vance couldn’t believe his luck when a vulnerable Democrat made this bad decision.
Ohio Democrat Senator holds event with radical climate change group
U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) is one of the vulnerable Senate Democrats up for reelection this November.
He’s holding a campaign event with a radical climate change group that’s trying to get the largest coal-fired power plant in Ohio closed.
Brown is participating in an online phone bank hosted by the Ohio Democratic Party Coordinated Campaign with the Sierra Club, one of the biggest climate change groups in the country.
The Sierra Club’s goal is to close “all U.S. coal plants.”
And the group, along with the Private Equity Stakeholder Project, sent a letter to the private equity group Blackstone demanding the closure of its Gavin Power Plant in southeastern Ohio because it runs on coal.
“You cannot undo the damage from pollutants emitted during Blackstone’s nearly eight years of ownership of Gavin. But you have the opportunity to announce a retirement date of no later than 2028, which could lend Blackstone some credibility in its pledges of emissions reductions and an energy transition and avoid the perception that Blackstone is incapable of shepherding assets through an energy transition and is simply interested in passing the buck,” the letter declared.
The Sierra Club is using its Beyond Coal Campaign to replace “coal and gas with clean energy” by “retiring coal plants, preventing new fossil fuel plants from being built, and working to stop the expansion of fracked gas.”
War on coal could cost Democrats
Two-time failed Democrat Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton told the coal industry exactly what Democrats wanted to do to it during a 2016 town hall in Columbus, Ohio – less than two hours from the Gavin Power Plant.
“We’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business,” Clinton boasted.
Ohio Republican Senate candidate Bernie Moreno – who was endorsed by former President Donald Trump and his running mate, U.S. Senator J.D. Vance (R-OH) – is hammering Brown for his hostility to the state’s fossil fuel industry.
Fracking, coal mining, and coal power plants are important to Ohio’s economy and to keeping the lights on in the state.
Brown is running in the toughest race of his career and has tried to rebrand himself as a moderate on energy.
His support from the Sierra Club, who endorsed him and donated to his campaign, makes that a tough sell to voters.
The Sierra Club called the Gavin Power Plant the “America’s deadliest coal plant” and called on Blackstone to close it to make way for green energy.
More than 300 people work at the power plant, which supplies Ohio with cheap, reliable energy.
Brown said he wouldn’t “turn my back on Ohio’s rural electric co-ops, Ohio energy workers, and Ohio families whose energy bills are already too high.”
His cooperation with the Sierra Club proves that’s just another empty election-year promise designed to fool voters.
