**Full Scorecard available in English and Spanish here**
Santa Fe, NM – Conservation Voters New Mexico (CVNM) today unveiled scores for the New Mexico delegation released this morning as part of the League of Conservation Voters 2014 National Environmental Scorecard. The Scorecard reveals another year of U.S. House leadership attacking our environment and public health safeguards, a sharp contrast with the U.S. Senate’s persistent defense of the environment and President Obama’s leadership on these issues.
“Once again, far too many members of Congress were complicit in extreme attacks on our environment, but allies like Senator Heinrich, Senator Udall, Representative Lujan and Representative Lujan Grisham stand out for New Mexican values first,” said Demis Foster, CVNM Executive Director. “Despite last year being the hottest year on record, members like Representative Pearce put their polluting allies first.”
The 2014 Scorecard covers the top environment, energy and public health votes cast during the second session of the 113th Congress. It includes 35 House votes, which ties the record for the most votes ever scored in a single year and is testament to House leadership’s relentless assault on everything from climate action and clean water to endangered species and public lands. Fortunately, the House’s polluter agenda was blocked by environmental champions in the Senate. The Senate’s ability to stop these environmental assaults, in part, accounts for the unusually low number of five Senate votes in the 2014 Scorecard.
In NM, two House members and two Senators earned a score of 80 percent or greater on the 2014 Scorecard, while one House members earned an abysmal score of 10 percent or less. The average House score in 2014 for New Mexico was 61 percent and the average Senate score was 80 percent.
“This year’s Scorecard shows that while the world experienced the hottest year on record, the U.S. House leadership continued its reckless assault on our environment, proving themselves nothing more than a carbon copy of the past three years,” said LCV President Gene Karpinski. “Fortunately, we have a force of environmental allies, including the president, as well as many state elected officials, who are intent on pulling us closer and closer to meeting the greatest challenge of our time—climate change.”
Senator Martin Heinrich, 80%
Senator Tom Udall, 80%
Congresswoman Michelle Lujan Grisham, 86%
Congressman Steve Pearce, 6%
Congressman Ben Ray Lujan, 91%
Unfortunately, we expect attacks on climate, air, lands, wildlife and clean energy to continue in the 114th Congress. Indeed the very first bill the Senate took up in 2015—to force approval of the dangerous and dirty Keystone XL Pipeline—has given us such a clear picture, including some promising bright spots, of where Senators now stand on the shifting politics of climate change and clean energy that LCV took the unusual step earlier this month of releasing a Special Edition Scorecard, which details Senator’s records on 18 of the top amendments considered and double scores final passage of the legislation.
For over 40 years, the National Environmental Scorecard issued by LCV has been the nationally accepted yardstick used to rate members of Congress on environmental, public health, and energy issues. LCV has released an interactive National Environmental Scorecard, which allows users to easily see how every member of Congress voted since the launch of LCV’s first Scorecard in 1971. It can be found online at scorecard.lcv.org .
Contact: Liliana Castillo, 505-992-8683 or liliana@cvnm.org
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