My opponent, incumbent Congressman
John Carter, slipped on a banana peel--or should I say oil slick -- when he invited the TV cameras over to a local gas station to shoot footage of him standing in front of a handful of constituents while he blamed soaring gas prices on protecting the environment. It just so happens Carter owns over a million dollars of stock in
Exxon Mobil Corporation, a fact turned up just the day before by my volunteer researcher.
Did Carter think holding his "gripe-n-grin" at a Shell station would throw us off the scent? Not when the stench of corruption smells this rank! Imagine this oil spillionaire pretending to understand the average Joe's pain-at-the-pump when his financial disclosure shows him owning between one and five million dollars worth of stock in a company with quarterly profits of over eight billion -- that's over a thousand dollars a second! He feels your pain -- ka-ching!
Carter's remedies? Coal, nuclear and off-shore drilling -- "because of environmental issues, it (sic) continues to be blocked," he said.
Just a few days earlier, Carter was up in Washington voting no on every proposal to reign in Big Oil's greed, such as taking away their tax breaks and closing loopholes you could drive an oil tanker through. Then he high-tailed it back to Texas on a jet to do Exxon's usual dirty work when prices spike -- using the crisis in prices to try to bring back oil exploration at its reckless worst -- last I checked, even Jeb Bush and the Governator had reservations about that! (Of course, Carter calling for relaxing environmental protection isn't exactly a Nixon-goes-to-China moment, given his zero percent environmental score from the League of Conservation Voters.)
But give credit where credit is due: when I pointed out the conflict of interest to a local TV station, Carter's office helpfully clarified that he inherited the Exxon Mobil stock -- which is held in a trust fund -- fair-and-square from his father, a former Exxon employee. Carter then complained that I was playing politics instead of working on solutions for high gas prices. Guess I should have held a news conference at a gas station or something.
Had enough?
I have. That's why I'm running for Congress. While my oldest boy is serving in Iraq and our youngest boy will follow him in September, my opponent's trust fund is soaring, and his million dollar campaign fund is bulging with $28,000 in oil company PAC donations, too.
The ones making the biggest sacrifices during this "time of war" are our men and women in uniform. Is it too much to ask oil companies and trust fund politicians to curb their greed for the good of the country, not to mention the planet?
If you agree, please consider helping out by making a donation. I'd rather have a thousand twenty-eight dollar contributions from the grass roots than $28,000 from the oil patch!
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(Mary Beth Harrell is the Democratic nominee in Congressional District 31. She is a successful attorney and prosecutor, as well as the wife of a retired military officer and mother of two active duty soldiers. One son is in Iraq now and the second son will be deployed in September.)