Trump’s Moves On Offshore Drilling And Pot Further Expose Vulnerable GOPers

Gas is flared off from a flame boom aboard offshore oil and gas platform Edith in the Beta Field off the coast of Long Beach, California, U.S.  Senators from California, Oregon and Washington introduced legislation to ban offshore oil drilling off the West Coast amid mounting concern about the BP Deepwater Horizon rig spill spreading in the Gulf of Mexico.
Gas is flared off from a flame boom aboard offshore oil and gas platform Edith in the Beta Field off the coast of Long Beach, California, U.S. Senators from California, Oregon and Washington introduced legislation to... Gas is flared off from a flame boom aboard offshore oil and gas platform Edith in the Beta Field off the coast of Long Beach, California, U.S. Senators from California, Oregon and Washington introduced legislation to ban offshore oil drilling off the West Coast amid mounting concern about the BP Deepwater Horizon rig spill spreading in the Gulf of Mexico. (Photo by Tim Rue/Corbis via Getty Images) MORE LESS
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Vulnerable Republicans on both coasts – and a few places in between – must be pulling out their hair after the Trump administration’s latest moves on marijuana and offshore drilling.

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke announced a plan to open up vast tracts of both the Atlantic and Pacific coastlines for offshore oil and gas drilling leases on Thursday afternoon, just hours after Attorney General Jeff Sessions unleashed federal prosecutors to crack down in states that have legalized marijuana, throwing eight states’ legal regimes into chaos.

Both moves risk further alienating swing voters in coastal states as well as those states that have legalized marijuana or implemented medical marijuana programs. And while neither may be an election-defining national issue, they carry a one-two punch to GOP lawmakers from Southern California to Washington and Florida to New Jersey to Maine who are hoping to hang onto their House seats and represent college educated, traditionally Republican voters already turned off by Trump and worried about the impact of the GOP tax law.

The moves also could further motivate millennial voters to turn out for Democrats. Polls show that nearly two thirds of voters now support legalized marijuana, a huge spike in recent years — and those numbers are much higher with younger voters.

“Coastal Republicans were already having a tough time dealing with constituents who were pissed off about the tax bill,” former Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Political Director Ian Russell told TPM. “It’s like they’re handpicking issues they’re not winning on. It’s bizarre.”

The pair of decisions had Democrats banding together in fury — joined by some swing-state Republicans, a telling sign heading into a rough midterm.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R), a longtime Trump ally and possible Senate candidate in a state where the Deepwater Horizon oil spill isn’t so distant a memory, made a rare break with the Trump administration following Zinke’s announcement.

In a statement, Scott said he opposed the decision and demanded a meeting with Zinke to “remove Florida from consideration” for more offshore drilling.

He wasn’t alone — Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL), a swing-district Republican from coastal Florida, called Zinke’s proposal “extremely alarming and unacceptable” in a statement.

Sen. Cory Gardner (R-CO), the head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee who represents one of the eight states that has legalized pot sales, was even harsher in his response to Sessions, threatening to hold up all Department of Justice nominees until the policy is reversed.

Other GOP senators from states with legal pot also criticized the move. But Sen. Dean Heller (R-NV), facing a tough primary as well as reelection challenge, put out an ambivalent statement that could further complicate his 2018 chances — and his Democratic opponent, Rep. Jackie Rosen (D-NV), was quick to pounce.

Offshore drilling could hurt Republicans hoping to hang onto House seats in Washington, California, Florida, Virginia, New Jersey, and even Maine and Texas. And Sessions’ move to crack down on legal pot hurts them in Maine, Colorado and Nevada, states that have legalized marijuana  sales and have competitive House races.

But nowhere do those dual blows hit harder for Republicans than in California, a state that’s just days into having legalized marijuana after passing a referendum by a double-digit margin last fall and that has a long history of opposition to oil drilling ever since the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill that helped create the environmental movement.

“California voters have spoken in terms of where they stand on this issue and if you look at public polling the American public is also speaking. This guy has not only mis-prioritized the limited resources of the department, he is frankly out of sync with where the vast majority of Californians are and I would suggest even most Americans are,” Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) told TPM of Sessions’ move to upend states’ rights on marijuana regulation.

California Republicans are defending more than a half-dozen vulnerable members, many of them in districts on or near the coast in Orange County, and they were already facing tough races given the state’s repulsion to Trump.

“I definitely would not want to be a California Republican House member right now,” Jack Pitney, a former Republican congressional staffer who teaches at Claremont McKenna College in Southern California, told TPM. “If Trump’s approval rating could go any lower in California, it will.”

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Notable Replies

  1. It doesn’t expose those Republicans enough.

    If it will poison the air and water or endanger the welfare of the nation, the Trump maladministration is for it.

  2. Excellent news for Democrats.

  3. Avatar for jtx jtx says:

    If this doesn’t work he will go to war.

  4. Everything Trump touches turns to shit. Way to go, Republicans, may the Trump carnage wipe you off the congressional map.

  5. Those words “excellent news for” historically carry a certain amount of irony-laden idiomatic freight at this site, you know . . .

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