Big Oil loses big in Washington
Local elections, especially in non-presidential years, rarely draw the kind of national attention and money seen in statewide or nationwide races. But for the past few months, two local races in Washington State have captivated the fossil fuel industry, which funneled historic amounts of money to candidates friendly to their agenda.
On Tuesday night, however, as Democratic candidates swept races from New Hampshire to Virginia, Big Oil found itself starkly rebuked in Washington state, as two candidates running on pro-environmental platforms proved that the fossil fuel industry, though powerful, is not infallible.
Voters in East King County — just outside of Seattle — elected Democrat Manka Dhingra to the state senate, a decisive victory that tips the scale of the state legislature in favor of Democrats. With a Democratic majority, Gov. Jay Inslee (D) could find enough allies to advance his environmental and climate agenda, which for years has included trying to pass a carbon tax. In 2015, a Republican-controlled legislature refused to take action on a cap-and-trade bill backed by Inslee; in the meantime, Inslee has directed the state Department of Ecology to craft a plan for carbon emission reductions, but has suggested that he would prefer passing a carbon tax through the legislature.
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Just over 160 miles south of Seattle, a second local election also revealed cracks in the fossil fuel industry’s strategy in Washington, as a man named Don Orange defeated his opponent, Kris Greene, to claim the third seat on the Port of Vancouver’s Board of Commissioners.
Like the 45th District race, fossil fuel interests and climate activists targeted the Vancouver election because of its potential national and international climate implications: the Port of Vancouver has, for years, been the site of a battle over the largest proposed oil-by-rail terminal in the United States, known as the Tesoro-Savage terminal proposal. If built, the terminal would handle some 360,000 barrels of crude oil every day, brought by oil trains through the Columbia River Gorge that divides Oregon and Washington. The terminal would greatly increase oil train traffic, adding an additional 155 trains per week to the state’s railroads.
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Tesoro, the company behind the proposal, spent at least $370,000 on Greene’s candidacy, who previously voiced support for the terminal (though he moderated his stance during the campaign, saying that he would defer to the state’s environmental impact study). Orange, on the other hand, ran on a decidedly anti-terminal campaign, arguing that the project would create only a small number of permanent jobs while jeopardizing the community’s health and natural resources. Orange advocated for terminating the project’s lease at the port — which was extended by the Vancouver Port Commission by a vote of two to one in March — and for bringing renewable energy jobs to the area.
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