Washington, DC: LCV Victory Fund today named the twelve candidates for federal office to its signature Dirty Dozen. For decades, the Dirty Dozen program has highlighted candidates — regardless of party affiliation — who consistently side against the environment and are running in races in which LCV Victory Fund has a serious chance to affect the outcome. Since Donald Trump was elected, LCV Victory Fund has defeated 75% of the candidates named to the Dirty Dozen. 

This year’s Dirty Dozen list includes: Donald Trump–President; Sam Brown–Senate, NV; Ken Calvert–House, CA-41; Juan Ciscomani–House, AZ-06; Anthony D’Esposito–House, NY-04; Yvette Herrell–House, NM-02; Eric Hovde–Senate, WI; Kari Lake–Senate, AZ; David McCormick–Senate, PA; Bernie Moreno–Senate, OH; Tim Sheehy–Senate, MT; Michelle Steel–House, CA-45. More details on each Dirty Dozen member below. 

“This year we had an easier time finding a dozen dirty candidates than JD Vance had ordering a dozen donuts,” said Pete Maysmith, SVP for Campaigns at LCV Victory Fund. “Defeating this year’s Dirty Dozen at the ballot box is key to keeping us away from Project 2025 and on the path to a clean energy future with more jobs, lower energy costs, and less of the pollution that fuels the climate crisis.” 

“Since we named Trump the Dirtiest of All Time in 2020, he’s actually gotten worse–inciting the insurrection of January 6th, continuing to lie about his loss, and making increasingly unhinged statements like wanting to be a dictator in order to “drill, baby, drill,” saying he hates wind and worries about shark attacks in electric boats. Not to mention suggesting that Big Oil invest $1 Billion to support his campaign,” continued Maysmith. “He’s made it clear that he doesn’t take climate change seriously, even saying it’s not our problem, and joked about extreme heat endangering his own supporters. The down-ballot Trump acolytes are just piling into the same clown car with him echoing his extreme, weird and unserious views on climate and clean energy–that’s why we’re also labeling this year’s Dirty Dozen crew the Climate Clowns.”

This year’s Dirty Dozen reflects the path to a pro-climate, pro-democracy White House and Congress, with a focus on extremist Senate challengers and MAGA House incumbents along with three-time designee Donald Trump, who LCV Victory Fund named The Dirtiest of All Time in 2020. Taken together the dozen have taken nearly $10 million from Big Oil. Each member of this year’s Dirty Dozen is the focus of some form of paid program including paid advertising, canvassing, or both, in addition to other tactics like relational organizing and content creator strategies.

More information on each member of the Dirty Dozen: 

Donald Trump–President: Trump was already the most anti-environmental president in history, having rolled back 100 environmental protections, suppressed science, appointed anti-environmental officials and judges and continued to call climate change a hoax while in office. Since then, his views have somehow gotten weirder and the Project 2025 playbook he would be working off of would have devastating consequences. On the campaign trail he has vowed to be a dictator in order to expand oil drilling and will eliminate support for wind power on day one. He frequently invokes donuts, sharks and bird graveyards and says that climate change is “not our problem.”  

Sam Brown–Senate, NV: Sam Brown is what you get when you take a complete lack of understanding about issues important to Nevadans and combine it with partisan loyalty to a reckless MAGA ideology. Brown said he would eliminate U.S. Departments of Energy, Education, Transportation, and federal “environmental departments and agencies.” Without the Department of Energy, it remains unclear who he would leave in charge of all of the nuclear he supported dumping at the controversial Yucca Mountain facility. Nevada stands to gain hundreds of millions of dollars in economic growth through clean energy tax incentives that are creating jobs and saving households money. Investments in clean energy have bipartisan support among Nevada voters, but Sam Brown would join MAGA Republicans in Washington seeking to undo this progress.

Ken Calvert–House, CA-41: Ken Calvert was first elected to Congress in 1992, and now he’s trying to hide from his abysmal record on environmental issues and his 8% lifetime LCV score. Still, Ken Calvert made his partisan allegiances clear when he sided with extremists on the “Default on America” plan which threatened to force a national recession if Republicans didn’t get their way on gutting environmental protections. Over the years, Calvert has taken nearly half a million dollars in campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry, and continues to side with dirty energy special interests over Californians. California has seen 43 new clean energy project announcements since the Inflation Reduction Act passed with these projects bringing more than $11 billion in economic investments, but Ken Calvert opposed the clean energy tax credits at the heart of this economic boom and voted three times to repeal them.

Juan Ciscomani–House, AZ-06: Juan Ciscomani, is a career right-wing activist trying to hide his extreme MAGA past. Before going to Congress, Ciscomani served for 14 years on the board of a fringe group called Patriot Academy that hosts extreme right-wing speakers and promotes climate deniers. Now that he’s trying to hide his extreme MAGA Republican ties, Ciscomani wants to greenwash over his 14% lifetime LCV score and his record of voting to kill off clean energy tax incentives. In his short time in Congress, Juan Ciscomani has cozied up to special interests, taking $12,725 in campaign contributions from the mining industry and voting for a bill to allow a foreign-owned company to dump toxic mining waste on public lands in the Santa Rita Mountains. Pima County residents have been opposed to the project for more than a decade because it will deplete the water supply in the County while polluting local air and water. Ciscomani has also taken $97,008 in campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry since taking office and voted to sell out our public lands to oil companies.

Anthony D’Esposito–House, NY-04: Anthony D’Esposito represents a Democratic district that President Biden won by more than 14 points in 2020, yet he continues to ally himself with Trump and extreme MAGA Republicans, supporting the disastrous “Default on America” plan which threatened to force a national recession if Republicans didn’t get their way on gutting environmental protections. Anthony D’Esposito has been a vocal opponent of clean energy, voting three times to repeal clean energy tax credits and opposing a major new clean energy infrastructure project in New York. He even cosponsored a measure calling for a halt to offshore wind development on the entire Atlantic coast, but only 9 days later, he voted to force the Department of the Interior to auction off our coastlines for oil drilling and slash the fees that oil companies would have to pay to drill offshore.

Yvette Herrell–House, NM-02: Yvette Herrell now holds the record for most appearances on the Dirty Dozen list, having lost to LCVAF-endorsed candidates in 2018 and 2022. She has a 0% lifetime LCV score and was one of the top recipients of oil and gas money during her brief time in Congress. Yvette Herrell has taken $735,161, in campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry, and even voted to protect oil companies from price-gouging investigations.

As a state legislator, Yvette Herrell made herself an enemy of public lands in New Mexico and cosponsored two bills that proposed transferring federal lands to state control, a move which could make it easier for the land to end up in the hands of private developers. She also voted for a bill that would limit public access to streams for fishing.

Eric Hovde–Senate WI: Eric Hovde is a multi-millionaire bank executive who likes to rail against regulations and is being backed by billionaire oil barons who also fight against any kind of meaningful environmental safeguards. Hovde would join the dirty energy industry’s backers in Congress who want to keep us dependent on fossil fuels and even said that the push to get to 100% clean energy by 2050 is “delusional.” Hovde supports a pro-polluter agenda, endorsing Donald Trump’s policies in 2019 by saying “His deregulation program and obviously his tax reform act was very good for businesses.” The Trump tax law ended up becoming a $25 billion handout to Big Oil. Hovde also denounced the historic investments in building a clean energy economy, calling the Inflation Reduction Act a “big ugly bill” even though clean energy tax credits are expected to add billions to Wisconsin’s economy while reducing energy costs for Wisconsin households. Furthermore, Hovde’s own bank has recommended their customers take advantage of these tax credits while he rails against them himself.

Kari Lake–Senate, AZ: Kari Lake is a fringe climate change denier whose failed 2022 campaign was backed by Arizona’s utility companies and the oil and gas industry. Lake has positioned herself as a mouthpiece for the climate denial and misinformation of the extreme MAGA right wing by saying such things as “don’t tell me that we’re in some sort of a weird heating trend, I don’t believe that for a minute” and “I’m not going to be afraid of the weather.” and parroting Donald Trump’s misinformation about windmills and birds. While Arizona was facing record heat last year, Kari Lake dismissed concerns about heat deaths as “mass hysteria.” Likewise, she continues to deny the reality of Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss, and her own loss in 2022. If elected, Kari Lake has made it clear that she wants to “go back” to doubling down on dirty fossil fuel infrastructure. 

Dave McCormick–Senate, PA: Dave McCormick is a mega-millionaire former CEO of the world’s largest hedge fund whose answer to a question about energy policy at a campaign stop involved mentioning that his wife Dina Powell McCormick is on the board of Exxon. It should be no surprise that Dave McCormick’s energy policy plan literally starts and ends with oil and gas. McCormick says “we need to get back to the energy policies under President Trump.” McCormick says he would repeal the bipartisan infrastructure law and roll back the Inflation Reduction Act which are expected to bring in billions of dollars in economic growth to Pennsylvania while helping Pennsylvania households save on energy costs. McCormick is running in a critical battleground state that has seen the highest amount of outside spending for a non-presidential race so far this cycle. McCormick’s own personal wealth combined with the money special interests are pouring in to help his pro-polluter agenda ensure that this race will come down to a razor-thin margin.

Bernie Moreno–Senate, OH: Bernie Moreno is a multi-millionaire former luxury car dealer who ran as an extreme-right candidate against JD Vance in the 2022 Senate primary. This time around, with Donald Trump’s endorsement, Moreno has made it crystal clear that he is fully on board with Trump’s dirty energy agenda. When asked if there’s any issues on which he disagreed with Trump, Moreno said “we’re 100% aligned” and parroted Trump’s “energy dominance” rhetoric, which is the MAGA codeword for an agenda that calls for massive rollbacks of environmental safeguards and handouts to Big Oil. At a candidate forum in February, Moreno made his priorities clear when he said “This is Findlay, Ohio. This is the headquarters of Marathon Petroleum. We should be unleashing American energy and being an energy-dominant country. Instead, we have this move towards windmills, solar panels. We need coal, we need natural gas, we need oil. That’s gonna drive prices down.”

Tim Sheehy–Senate, MT:  Tim Sheehy is part of the growing number of out-of-state millionaires moving to Montana, buying up lands and driving up costs. Sheehy joined the board of right-wing think tank the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC), but quietly failed to disclose his role with the group in violation of ethics rules. PERC advocates for policies that would make it easier for billionaires to wield even more control over land in Montana, including advocating for privatizing public lands.

If elected, Sheehy would join the ranks of climate deniers on Capitol Hill. In a statement to the Montana Free Press, Sheehy denied the reality of human-caused climate change, saying “The climate has always been changing, but the Leftist Climate Cult agenda is not about the environment, it’s about control.” Sheehy repeatedly hurls the phrase “climate cult” as an insult against leaders like Jon Tester who work to address the climate crisis.

Michelle Steel–House, CA-45: Michelle Steel proudly denounces her state’s leadership on climate and clean energy despite the massive economic benefits being felt by so many. So far over her career she has earned a dismal 4% lifetime score from LCV for her voting record, even achieving a resounding 0% in 2023. Her votes include attempts to repeal clean energy investments that are already helping California create good paying jobs and trying to repeal critical protections for clean air and water. She’s even voted against bills to protect the California coastline from offshore drilling and to stop oil price gouging while making up to $50,000 in oil royalties. Furthermore, she’s the recipient of more than $150,000 in donations from the oil and gas industry in less than four years on the job.

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Paid for by LCV Victory Fund, www.lcvvictoryfund.org, and not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.