Big-Oil Funded Campaign Misleads Latino Voters on Washington State Carbon Tax

The fossil-fuel-funded campaign to defeat the carbon tax ballot measure in Washington State is attracting enormous sums of money as well as charges of dubious outreach efforts towards minority communities.

A review of state data by Reuters shows that the oil industry has spent more than $30 billion dollars to fight the measure—double the amount of money spent by pro-initiative groups, and the most money ever spent to defeat a ballot measure in Washington.

And as The Stranger reports, some of that staggering sum is going towards misleading campaigns directed at Spanish-speaking voters: several Latino business owners say that a mailer sent by the opposition campaign listing their businesses as opposed to the ballot measure is misleading and that they did not agree to appear on the mailer.

“Most campaigns don’t even bother reaching out to Latino voters,” Peter Bloch Garcia of the Latino Community Fund told The Stranger. “But because we’ve been organizing for years, front and center, and taking a strong position in support of 1631 they are explicitly targeting us. I have never in my life in Washington seen a targeted mailer like this that has exploited our community.”

The Environment Is on the November Ballot — Here’s Where and What’s at Stake https://t.co/49jGH3GHfZ

— EcoWatch (@EcoWatch) October 13, 2018

For a deeper dive:

Reuters, The Stranger

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