Here’s a look at how it’s playing out in five races:
Alaska: Dan Sullivan vs. Al Gross
Independent Al Gross’s campaign to unseat Sen. Dan Sullivan, the incumbent Republican, is a long shot in a state that has voted for Republican presidential candidates since 1964. But Alaskans have an independent streak, and a recent political scandal over a proposed gold and copper mine could propel Gross within striking distance.
A majority of Alaskans oppose plans to mine for the metals near the state’s salmon-rich Bristol Bay. So recordings published earlier this month showing top executives behind the mine bragging about their connections to Sullivan put him in a tough spot. In the tapes, one executive implied that the Republican senator supported the mining project but didn’t want to endorse it before the election, saying Sullivan was “off in a corner being quiet.”
Opponents say the mine would decimate wild sockeye salmon, an issue that has made the plan unpopular even among some Republicans, including the president’s avid sport-fishing son, Donald Trump Jr.
The controversy has provided political fodder for Gross, an orthopedic surgeon backed by Democrats, who has accused Sullivan of being beholden to special interests.
“If this was a NASCAR race, you would have corporate sponsor patches all over your jacket,” Gross quipped during a recent debate.
Sullivan insists he opposes the Pebble Mine. He’s leveled his own attacks against Gross, arguing that the independent candidate will follow the lead of left-wing Democrats and undermine Alaska’s oil industry, a crucial source of revenue in a state that doesn’t have an income tax.
South Carolina: Lindsay O. Graham vs. Jaime Harrison
A new moratorium on offshore drilling in South Carolina could give Republican Sen. Lindsay O. Graham a boost in a competitive race against challenger Jaime Harrison, who previously served as the chair of the state’s Democratic Party.
Giving Democrats fodder is Graham’s history of flip-flopping on whether South Carolina should welcome offshore drilling. An early Trump administration plan to open nearly all federal waters to oil and gas development drew howls of opposition from both Democrats and Republicans, who worried about the impact potential spills would have on beach tourism.
Tapping into that anxiety, a political action committee opposing the incumbent flew a plane along the state’s beaches this summer with a banner reading, “L. Graham Will Drill 4 Oil Here,” the Associated Press reported.
But President Trump may have taken some of the sting out of that attack. He made an about-face last month and announced a 10-year ban on oil and gas leases off the coasts of Florida, Georgia and South Carolina.
“Lindsey liked the idea right from the beginning,” Trump said during his speech in Florida on Sept. 8, with Graham in attendance. “I said, ‘What do you think?’ It took you — how long? — about two seconds to say, ‘I like it.’”
Maine: Susan Collins vs. Sara Gideon
Collins, the Senate’s most pro-environment Republican, could lose her seat as her brand of bipartisanship falls out of favor with both parties. A recent polling average from The Washington Post shows the four-term senator trailing Democratic challenger Sara Gideon, the speaker of the Maine House of Representatives.
Collins has bucked her party on environmental issues, boasting a lifetime score from the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) of 61 percent — four times as high as the next-highest-scoring Republican. She opposed Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris accord and voted to preserve restrictions on methane leaks.
But that record may not be enough to save her this time around. LCV, which endorsed her in 2013, decided to back Gideon, citing instances in which Collins proved unwilling to thwart her party’s broader agenda for the sake of environmental issues. Collins voted for the 2017 tax bill, which included a provision opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas leasing, and supported the confirmation of Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, who is expected to take a pro-business approach to environmental issues on the Supreme Court.
Pete Maysmith, the environmental group’s senior vice president of campaigns, said her score “is still a failing grade.” Plus, he added, the race could determine control of the Senate, and with it, whether climate change legislation comes up for a vote.
“Even if Collins is a big environmental champion, and she’s not, the majority leader of her party has said that he’s not going to let climate change legislation to the floor,” Maysmith said.
Colorado: Cory Gardner vs. John Hickenlooper
Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) is attempting to burnish his conservation credentials as he fights to hang on to his seat in an increasingly blue state where more than two-thirds of voters say they want to see action on climate change.
Gardner has pushed at least three ads touting his role in passing a piece of major conservation legislation, the Great American Outdoors Act, aimed at shoring up infrastructure in the country’s national parks and other public lands. By casting himself as a pragmatic environmentalist, the freshman senator may hope to appeal to moderates and independents, as he trails several points behind former Colorado governor John Hickenlooper (D) in the polls.
“We have an electorate more on the liberal side,” said Floyd Ciruli, the director of the Crossley Center for Public Opinion Research at the University of Denver. Climate change isn’t the top issue for Colorado voters, Ciruli added, but “it’s on the list,” and the conservation legislation lets Gardner play defense against attacks on his environmental record.
Critics have noted that supporters who appear in Gardner’s ad titled “Both Parties” are actually all Republicans:
But environmentalists accuse Gardner of greenwashing his record, noting his votes against clean air and water legislation and his failure to back an initiative to expand Colorado public lands.
Montana: Steve Daines vs. Steve Bullock
Sen. Steve Daines, the Republican incumbent, is also playing up his support for conservation legislation amid a challenge from a popular Democratic governor — Montana Gov. Steve Bullock (D).
In addition to backing the Great American Outdoors Act, the Republican senator signaled he might not support the Trump administration’s nomination of a William Perry Pendley, a controversial appointee to head the Bureau of Land Management. The administration pulled Pendley’s nomination this summer in part to avoid forcing vulnerable Republicans like Daines to take a position.
Robert Saldin, a political science professor at the University of Montana, said that Daines’s election-season appeal to conservation was less about trying to outdo the Democrats on environmental issues and more an attempt to play defense on public lands, a perennial issue in the state.
“Part of the trick out here for Republicans is to show a little bit of green thumb and throw a bone in the conservationists’ direction,” said Saldin.
Even if the Mountain West’s Republicans are feeling pressure to paint themselves as environmental moderates, political analysts say it doesn’t yet herald a shift toward climate-conscious Republicans in the Senate. The League of Conservation Voters gives Daines a lifetime score of 6 percent, and in the deep-red state of Montana, state polls show support for climate action below the national average.
Clarification: This article has been updated to clarify the sequence of events surrounding Pendley’s nomination, including the position of Sen. Daines.
Power plays
Trump is considering an executive order to show support for fracking.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the proposed order “would ask government agencies to perform an analysis of fracking’s impact on the economy and trade and the consequences if the oil-and-gas extraction technique was banned, officials said. It also would order those agencies to evaluate what more they can do to expand its use, possibly through land management or support of developing technology, they said.”
The order is not yet finalized, and it is unlikely to have any short-term impact on an industry struggling with lowered demand due to the coronavirus pandemic. But the goal seems to be to draw a contrast between Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden, who opposes fracking on federal lands but supports it elsewhere.
Biden campaign spokesman Matt Hill responded by urging the president to focus on a response to the coronavirus pandemic. “President Trump could be taking action right now to get the virus under control and create good jobs for Pennsylvanians, but instead he wants to commission a study — on the day of Pennsylvania’s highest spike in cases,” he said.
The Interior Department gets into a Twitter tussle with a former employee.
The department’s official account bashed Tim Fullerton, who worked for Interior under Obama, after Fullerton criticized what he called a “propaganda video” touting Trump’s environmental record ahead of the election.
“I ran the @interior digital team during President Obama’s re-election in 2012. I would have been fired for doing this,” Fullerton said of Interior’s minute-long video promoting the president’s conservation policies.
The official departmental response: “Our tweets are approved by career ethics attorneys and thankfully no longer overseen by you.”
A climate advocacy group urged Biden to appoint financial advisers who will prioritize climate.
Evergreen Action, an environmental group formed by former staffers to Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), is recommending that Biden use “the U.S. financial system to counter climate change within his first 100 days in office” should he win, Reuters reports.
The group recommends following the example of other countries, where central banks have incorporated risks from climate change into their monetary policy. It also calls on the next administration to push transparency and accountability among corporations and investors related to climate risks. Evergreen Action has advised both House Democrats and the Biden campaign as they have written climate plans.
In the courts
The Trump administration faces a lawsuit over expanded hunting in wildlife refuges.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service “faces a forthcoming lawsuit over its decision to open up or expand hunting at 147 national wildlife refuges and fish hatcheries,” the Hill reports. “The Center for Biological Diversity filed a notice of intent to sue the agency Tuesday, arguing that the government didn’t fully analyze the effects of the decision on endangered species including birds and jaguars.”
The Fish and Wildlife Service opened or expanded hunting and finishing on 2.3 million acres of federal land in August.
Environmental groups argue that a Colorado land plan approved by Pendley is invalid.
The groups filed new legal claims Tuesday challenging a Bureau of Land Management plan to increase fossil fuel extraction in 1.7 million acres of public lands in Colorado. The plan was approved by William Perry Pendley, the former acting director of the bureau, who was forced out of his position after a federal judge ruled that Pendley’s position at the head of the agency was unlawful given that he had not been confirmed by the Senate and had served beyond the time permitted under federal law for acting positions.
The groups behind the challenge argue that decisions approved under Pendley’s watch are invalid. The conservation groups include the Western Environmental Law Center, Citizens for a Healthy Community, High Country Conservation Advocates, the Center for Biological Diversity, WildEarth Guardians and the Western Watersheds Project.
