Greens expand ad campaign against Trump EPA pick

Environmental groups have expanded their advertising assault against President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). 

One day before EPA pick Scott Priutt’s Wednesday confirmation hearing, the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) released a digital advertising campaign opposing his nomination. 

The $50,000 ad buy will run through the end of the month, and the LCV said it’s aiming to receive 1 million impressions.

{mosads}This weekend, NextGen Climate announced a seven-state ad buy against Pruitt. The group’s campaign — on the air in Arizona, Maine, Maryland, Nevada, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and Washington, D.C. — highlight’s Pruitt’s ties to the fossil fuel industry. 

Green groups are sharpening their lines of attack on Pruitt before his confirmation hearing Wednesday. The campaigns from LCV and NextGen come following other ad blitzes from groups like the Sierra Club, which said on Tuesday it would also deliver a “Pruitt survival kit” to senators containing bottles of water and face masks. 

Several groups held a call with reporters on Tuesday to frame Pruitt’s selection as one that presents an existential threat to the EPA. 

Rhea Suh, the president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, called him “literally the worst nominee ever tapped to lead the EPA.”

Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune said he is “dangerous to its mission,” and LCV President Gene Karpinski said Pruitt “would be the worst-ever EPA administrator, by far. That’s why we’re all in, united, trying to reject this nominee.”

Republicans and Pruitt supporters have dismissed greens’ full-court press against his selection. They predict Pruitt will hold on to most, if not all, Republican votes in the Senate, and even attract support from some red-state Democrats. 

Environmentalists on Tuesday acknowledged the challenge they face in stopping Pruitt.

“We all know that it’s very difficult to prevent confirmation, but we feel as if this is an extreme nomination and it’s very important to frame this in terms of what the president-elect is trying to get done here,” said NextGen Climate President Tom Steyer.

“I think there’s a lot of fluidity right now as we’re discussing a lot of the information about Pruitt,” Environmental Defense Action Fund President Elizabeth Thompson said.

“The first process is educating senators about what he’s all about. We believe with more education that his nomination will be in jeopardy.”