GOP candidate for governor Chris Dudley is looking vulnerable on an issue that helped take down GOP Sen. Gordon Smith back in 2008, the environment.
This week, Stimson Lumber, Dudley's largest campaign donor (to the tune of $235,000) was hit with nearly $15,000 in fines for "failing to comply with hazardous air pollution standards, failing to operate an air quality control scrubber properly and discharging wastewater into Scoggins Creek." Not a huge fine as far as environmental fines go (barely a drop in the bucket to what they've spent on Dudley), but nonetheless showing failure to comply with environmental standards. Given how deep in the pocket of industry--particularly timber--Dudley is, then the revelation that he's a climate change denier makes sense.
Toeing the party line, Dudley opposes the Western Climate Initiative global warming agreement as a “cap-tax-trade” system that would “do damage to the economy and job creation.” He even bashed a weatherization initiative as a boondoggle. “Climate change is probably caused by a variety of factors,” Dudley said in a September interview with the Oregonian, “but that debate is beside the point.” In a gubernatorial debate on September 30, Dudley finally admitted he doesn’t know if pollution is causing global warming:
My thought on global warming is this: that global warming exists, man contributes to it, how much, I don’t know. I don’t know how much is man made and how much is natural.
His friends at Stimson Lumber might like that answer, but most Oregon voters probably won't.
The more Oregon voters learn about Dudley, this story being no exception, the more they turn away. Even Rasmussen now has Kitzhaber leading, though still by just a hair, 48-46.
continued at Daily Kos....
