Hill Heat

U.S. Senate candidate Joni Ernst denied coordinating with outside groups who are involved in the race, despite her participation in a secret summit organized by the Koch brothers in June. Speaking at a Des Moines, Iowa, event on October 23, Ernst claimed she doesn’t have any contact with outside groups that are running negative ads.

“I can’t control the outside groups, with the independent expenditures,” Ernst said. “You know, I don’t have contact with them.”

However, at June Koch summit in Dana Point, Calif., Ernst thanked the Koch network, which is now spending millions of dollars in attack ads and get-out-the-vote efforts on her behalf, for discovering her and powering her candidacy.

“A little-known state senator from a very rural part of Iowa, known through my National Guard service and some circles in Iowa. But the exposure to this group and to this network and the opportunity to meet so many of you, that really started my trajectory,” Ernst was recorded saying. “We are going to paint some very clear differences in this general election,” she said. “And this is the thing that we are going to take back—that it started right here with all of your folks, this wonderful network.”

As of October 27, the Koch super PAC Freedom Partners Fund has spent over $3,158,815 for Ernst, and the Koch 501c4 Americans for Prosperity has spent $250,954, according to FEC records compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics.

Ernst’s remarks in Des Moines were recorded by the Young Turks Undercurrent’s Lauren Windsor, who said Ernst was caught in a “big fat Koch lie.” Windsor had earlier released the audio recording of Ernst and other GOP Senate candidates speaking at the Koch retreat.

(Windsor is not associated with The Undercurrent, a right-wing libertarian campus magazine that promotes the Koch network.)

The leading contender for the Republican nomination to compete for Sen. Tom Harkin’s (D-Iowa) seat doubts the science of climate change and rejects any response that calls for more than voluntary actions. In a May 9, 2014 interview with the Des Moines Register editorial board, Iowa state senator Joni Ernst, a candidate for the U.S. Senate, expressed her disbelief in the science of anthropogenic climate change.

Yes, we do see climates change but I have not seen proven proof that it is entirely man-made. I think we do have cyclic changes in weather, and I think that’s been throughout the course of history. What impact is man-made. . . but I do think we can educate people to make good choices.

In reality, the carbon-dioxide greenhouse effect is a physical fact known since the 1800s. The only scientifically plausible systematic explanation for the rapid and continuing warming of the planetary climate since 1950 is industrial greenhouse pollution.

When asked how she believes the nation should respond to “our current climate situation,” her first recommendation was “encouraging people to, obviously, recycle.” She repeatedly and adamantly opposed “cap and trade” as a “tax on energy” and a “mandate.” She then argued the renewable fuel standard, which mandates the use of ethanol in gasoline, was not a mandate.

During the interview, Ernst expressed the similarly contrarian and evidence-less belief that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction before the United States invaded in 2003.

Ernst has been endorsed for the June 3 Republican primary by the Register, Sarah Palin, the National Rifle Association, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. If she wins, she will face Rep. Bruce Braley in the general election.