A Truthout investigation finds that among the biggest funders of the outside groups backing Republican candidates in Georgia and Montana are fossil fuel companies, which tend to favor conservatives who will join the Trump administration in rolling back environmental regulations that limit their profits. (Photo: CGP Grey / Flickr)
President Donald Trump nominated several sitting Congress members to lead federal agencies, and high-profile elections to fill their vacated seats are under way. The election to fill CIA director Mike Pompeo’s Kansas House seat took place on April 11, 2017, and a Bernie Sanders-supporting Democratic candidate came within seven points of the Republican winner in a heavily red district that hasn’t gone blue since 1992. In a Georgia election to fill Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price’s seat on April 18, young Democrat Jon Ossoff took 48 percent of the vote, not quite enough to avoid a runoff against Republican Karen Handle, scheduled for June 20. An election to fill the House seat of former Montana Rep. Ryan Zinke, now Secretary of the Interior, is coming up on May 25 in another district that has reliably voted Republican but is now in play after Trump’s exceedingly unpopular first 100 days.
These elections are the first since Trump took office, and their results may represent Americans’ discontent with their new leader, whose record-low approval rating is now at about 42 percent. A Democratic win in any of the upcoming races could give the fractured party a much-needed boost as it prepares its 2018 campaigns in hopes of taking back the House and hampering the White House agenda.
In Georgia and Montana, independent political spending groups are shelling out millions of dollars to aid their favorite candidates. A Truthout investigation finds that among the biggest funders of the outside groups backing Republican candidates are fossil fuel companies, which tend to favor conservatives who will join the Trump administration in rolling back…