By Mike Young | California League of Conservation Voters | Link to article
I was watching tv the other night when it cut to commercial. Dark, ominous music started as a political ad described a sitting legislator running for re-election who was also an apparent tax dodger. This legislator made $261,000 last year and didn’t pay anything in taxes. Wow! That’s outlandish. And who was this legislator? State Senator Fran Pavley. Wait… what? Senator Pavley has been my representative in the Assembly and State Senate for over a decade, and that didn’t sound like her at all. Then those magic words were listed at the very end of the ad: “paid for by California Senior Advocates League.” Now it was starting to make sense.
By now, I hope you know who these important “senior advocates” actually are: Chevron, Philip Morris, Anthem Blue Cross, and other multi-national corporations who have been funneling campaign money through various PACs to hide their identities. In just the last two weeks alone, the California Senior Advocates League has bought nearly $200,000 in airtime to run their ad –a drop in the bucket for these special interests. These groups are not only attacking Senator Pavley because redistricting left her with a new, much more competitive district than her previous one, but also because she’s been synonymous in California and around the world with the environmental movement and a clean energy economy. Defeating her would be a polluter’s dream come true.
