Scott Brown has parked his pickup truck in New Hampshire and is considering a run for the Senate from the Granite State. The prospect has already set GOP hearts aflutter. They love the idea of their Carhartt-clad candidate giving the popular incumbent Jeanne Shaheen a run for her money.
Brown is a gifted fundraiser who will attract national attention and financial support to the race. But he also comes with an Achilles heel: a track record of voting against children's health in favor of polluting industries.
Those votes hurt him in Massachusetts, and they will hurt him New Hampshire as well.
The Northeast is known as the tailpipe of our country, because so much of the nation's pollution filters through the region. This takes a heavy toll on kids. The childhood asthma rate in New England tops 10 percent -- one of the highest in the country.
Pollution from power plants, vehicles, and heavy industry is a leading contributor to asthma, heart attacks, and cancer. So is climate change, since hotter temperatures increase the amount of smog in the air. Last July, for instance, officials warned that scorching heat in New England was making air pollution worse and increasing the risk of asthma attacks and heart problems.
Yet when Brown represented Massachusetts in the Senate, he voted for an extreme proposal that would have prevented the Environmental Protection Agency from reducing carbon pollution from power plants. The League of Women Voters ran ads in Massachusetts taking him to task for the vote and linking climate change to increased asthma in children. Polls from before and after the accountability ads showed his popularity ratings drop; voters did not like their lawmaker choosing polluters over their kids' health.
Brown was unbowed. He supported a Senate budget bill that was called "the worst anti-environmental bill EVER" for its crippling cuts to the EPA and the Department of Energy's clean energy programs and for its dozens of harmful environmental riders.
Plenty of GOP lawmakers in the Congress have worse records than Brown's. Yet he is now running against a proven champion of clean air, clean energy, and climate action. Senator Shaheen has earned a score of 100 percent from the League of Conservation Voters for 2013, and a lifetime score of 95 percent. She voted for strong standards for mercury and other air toxins, reductions in cross-state air pollution from power plants, and for firm limits on climate change pollution. She has also sponsored bipartisan legislation to expand energy efficiency -- the cleanest and cheapest form of energy we have.
People in New Hampshire -- and around the nation -- value leaders who stand up for public health and climate action. More than two-thirds of voters in several battleground states say the EPA should limit carbon pollution from power plants, according to a new poll conducted by Harstad Strategic Research, Inc. for the NRDC Action Fund. This includes 53 percent of Republicans, 63 percent of Independents, and 87 percent of Democrats.
Those are powerful numbers, and they don't bode well for a carpetbagger who is 10 points down and comes with a history of voting in favor of polluters. Brown might consider putting his pickup in reverse and heading back to Massachusetts.