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Environmental group back in state with anti-Blunt TV spot

St. Louis Public Radio | By Jo Mannies
Published August 4, 2010 at 11:00 PM CDT

The League of Conservation Voters (LCV) Action Fund, an environmental advocacy group, is launching a new statewide ad campaign in Missouri that accuses U.S. Rep. Roy Blunt, the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate, of being too close to major oil companies.

A spokeswoman said the ad buy is "in the six figures" for a week's worth of spots on cable and broadcast stations in St. Louis and Kansas City.

The ad attacks Blunt over the generous campaign contributions he has received over the years from the oil and gas industries. (Click here to read the ad's text.) It does not mention the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate, Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan, but is clearly aimed at helping her campaign.

Last year, the League of Conservation Voters ran over $1 mllion in TV and radio spots critical of Blunt, who is on the group's "Dirty Dozen'' list.

Said League Action Fund President Gene Karpinski in a statement: "Blunt has taken good care of Big Oil by maintaining their billions in tax breaks while voting against opportunities to create new clean energy jobs for Missourians..."

The League contends that Blunt "has consistently voted against legislation to create clean energy jobs, against repealing subsidies to Big Oil, against increasing the use of renewable energy and against efforts to help Missouri drivers go further on a gallon of gas..."

The Missouri Republican Party contends that the environmental group is "out-of-touch with Missourians," and asserts that the new ad is "meant to disparage Roy Blunt and hoodwink Missourians into voting for Robin Carnahan, who supports their extreme environmentalist agenda."

"Robin Carnahan is hiding behind a radical environmental organization determined to saddle Missourians with a stealth energy tax under the guise of a carbon cap-and-trade scheme," said state GOP executive director Lloyd Smith. "Once again, her liberal allies have launched an ad campaign in retaliation for Roy Blunt’s principled stand against a costly and burdensome carbon cap-and-trade scheme that would raise prices on Missouri families..."

This article originally appeared in the St. Louis Beacon.
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Government, Politics & Issues PoliticsEnvironmentLeague Of Conservation VotersSt. Louis Beacon archives
Jo Mannies
Jo Mannies has been covering Missouri politics and government for almost four decades, much of that time as a reporter and columnist at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. She was the first woman to cover St. Louis City Hall, was the newspaper’s second woman sportswriter in its history, and spent four years in the Post-Dispatch Washington Bureau. She joined the St. Louis Beacon in 2009. She has won several local, regional and national awards, and has covered every president since Jimmy Carter. She scared fellow first-graders in the late 1950s when she showed them how close Alaska was to Russia and met Richard M. Nixon when she was in high school. She graduated from Valparaiso University in northwest Indiana, and was the daughter of a high school basketball coach. She is married and has two grown children, both lawyers. She’s a history and movie buff, cultivates a massive flower garden, and bakes banana bread regularly for her colleagues.
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