Special Interest Campaign to Smear State Senator with False Allegations Fails
A twenty-page press release and media strategy to malign a State Senator, terrorize a community, and kill the surging oil and gas industry in Ohio appears has fallen flat. At least as far as the law is concerned, that is.
Washington County for Safe Drinking Water — a group backed by numerous far left environmentalists that are funded by special interests out of California— claim to have filed a complaint with the Joint Legislative Ethics Committee attacking the Senate’s Energy Chairman, Brian Chavez.
Taking the group’s mudslinging at its word, the time for that complaint to be validated expired this week. And the silence is deafening.
No notification from JLEC means that the propaganda these groups vigorously promoted in the mainstream media died under its own weight of meritless supposition and conjecture, none of which was based in fact or law. Simply stated, it crashed and burned.
“This failed publicity stunt was nothing more than a libelous smear campaign against a respected State Senator that was backed by California special interests dead set on killing the oil and gas industry in Ohio,” said the Senate’s Director of Communications, John Fortney. “They don’t care what they say — they want to whip people into hysterics with campaigns designed to destroy an industry and rip apart a community.”
The groups that offered a letter of support to the baseless allegations reads like a who’s who of the elitist, entitled, and always offended. Buckeye Environmental Network, which received nearly $500,000 in funding from California special interests, Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Action, Ohio Valley Environmental Advocates, and the Sierra Club just to name a few.
Yet their fictious allegations and demonstrably false legal assertions were treated as gospel by multiple newsrooms, which was their entire strategy to begin with.
Take for instance the salacious claim Senator Chavez had a conflict-of-interest regarding SB 219. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, JLEC provided definitive guidance on the topic more than 20 years ago through Advisory Opinion 95-014. Then and now JLEC advised that no impermissible conflict exists when there is no “definite and particular effect on [a member’s] personal pecuniary interests.”
SB 219 offers a bold update to Ohio’s oil and gas laws which impacts the entire industry, not one person or a select few. With a class that large, even the suggestion that Senator Chavez has a conflict of interest stretches the bounds of credulity well beyond the breaking point, especially when the Ohio General Assembly is a citizen-run legislature that benefits from the experience and expertise of leaders in their fields.
We can debate policy differences all day long, but it is inexcusable to besmirch and impugn the character and integrity of an honorable and hardworking public servant who strives to push Ohio forward. Policy differences aren’t corruption, they’re democracy. On the other hand, perverting the ethics process to advance rejected policy preferences illustrates how desperate, unhinged, and disconnected these groups are to Ohioans and ultimately reality.
Fortunately, reasonable people don’t believe a word of it, because they support using Ohio’s natural resources to become energy independent. Ohioans refuse to be swindled and swayed by political syndicates that only care about their coastal enablers.
Ohio’s new 21 Century Energy Policy is reliable, affordable, and accountable. These groups are not.
The leftists used the words “ignorance” and “dishonesty” in their smear campaign against Senator Chavez. They should look in the mirror. There they will see the definition of ignorance and dishonesty.