Tobacco, Tea Party, and Dirty Energy: Lobbyist C. Boyden Gray | The Checks and Balances Project

As someone with deep ties to right-wing political circles, and strong financial ties to the tobacco industry, C. Boyden Gray fits the bill as the ideal lobbyist for the dirty energy industry. Dirty energy in many ways is the successor to the tobacco industry, given how it uses front groups and pundits to avoid public health regulations.

With impending EPA regulations for coal and gas, Gray and other lobbyists are getting busy trying to block progress on rules that would curb pollution and global warming.

C. Boyden Gray is an heir to the RJ Reynolds tobacco fortune – his grandfather was CEO of the company – and the co-chair and board member of the Tea Party powerhouse FreedomWorks Foundation. Gray is also a lobbyist for one of the worst coal corporations in America – FirstEnergy – and an outspoken critic of reforms that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions and global warming.

Those three groups – tobacco, tea party, and dirty energy – have become inextricably tied together. Through fossil fuel-funded front groups, the dirty energy industry has copied tactics from Big Tobacco’s infamous operations to manufacture doubt about clear scientific evidence, with pundits and lobbyists like Gray fueling climate change denial and attacking environmental and health regulations.

Gray is a founding partner of the lobbying firm Boyden Gray & Associates, where he advocates for the fossil fuel corporation FirstEnergy Corp., named one of the top 10 worst corporations in America in 2006, among others. Prior to the founding of his firm, he was a lawyer and lobbyist at Wilmer, Cutler and Pickering (now WilmerHale), where he represented clients facing federal sanctions for violating environmental laws. Many of his clients faced significant federal criminal prosecutions under the Clean Water Act. He counseled the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Liability Fund in litigation from the Exxon Valdez and American Trader oil spills, and he lobbied against the REACH bill, which required manufacturers to test industrial chemicals and to gather health and safety data.

Tobacco, Tea Party, and Dirty Energy: Lobbyist C. Boyden Gray | The Checks and Balances Project