Greens target four GOP senators in major ad buy

Four environmental groups are coordinating a multi-million-dollar advertising campaign targeting four Republican Senators who face reelection fights next year.

The green groups are attacking Sens. Richard Burr (N.C.), Rob Portman (Ohio), Pat Toomey (Pa.) and Ron Johnson (Wis.) with a total of five ads for their votes against President Obama’s landmark climate rule for power plants.

{mosads}“Polluters and their congressional allies have made dismantling clean air and climate protections a top priority this year,” the groups said in a Tuesday statement launching their campaign.

“Unfortunately, Senators Burr, Portman, Toomey, and Johnson have joined in by fighting to allow the big polluters to continue pumping unlimited amounts of carbon pollution into our air,” they said, citing droughts, wildfires, storms and other effects of climate change that show that “these senators need to start placing public health and safety above the profits of corporate polluters.

The Burr ad is being put out by the League of Conservation Voters (LCV); Portman’s is from the Sierra Club; Toomey gets ads both from the Natural Resources Defense Council’s NRDC Action Fund and the Environmental Defense Fund’s EDF Action; and Johnson’s ad is also from LCV.

The ads are being presented as lobbying efforts to convince the lawmakers to change their positions and do not have to follow campaign finance rules. But Democrats are eager to take back Senate control, and some of the Republicans could face tough reelection fights.

Replacing the senators would also help green groups toward their goal of defending the Environmental Protection Agency’s climate rule past the end of this term in 2017, no matter who the next president is.

The video ads will run on television and the web in each senator’s state for a month. The groups declined to give more specific cost figures beyond the multi-million-dollar range.