In a Politico story this morning, Katie McGinty’s trip through the revolving door at one of the nation’s largest energy companies was exposed.
The story highlights how McGinty met the company’s CEO and board while she was a state official, then took a lucrative job there just months later. McGinty went on to earn more than $1 million while encouraging investments that would eventually lead to the company’s long-time CEO stepping down and NRG’s stock prices dropping nearly 60 percent. McGinty would also go on to rake in more than $20,000 in campaign contributions from NRG employees.
This comes on the heels of McGinty being criticized by her primary opponents for claiming that she hadn’t accepted donations from the oil and gas industry.
With a Democratic primary debate scheduled for this evening, Katie McGinty will have some new questions to answer.
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McGinty’s environmental work hit from both sides in Pennsylvania
Politico | Kevin Robillard
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One thing she can’t claim, though is "outsider" status, ahead of what’s shaping up to be an outsider election.
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But her resume also includes what Republicans call trips through the "revolving door," onto the boards of big energy companies. Meanwhile, Democrats are criticizing her for being too friendly toward fracking, a hot-button issue for Pennsylvania progressives.
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The National Republican Senatorial Committee has already highlighted McGinty’s ties to the energy industry, releasing a web video featuring an actual revolving door. GOP Sen. Pat Toomey’s campaign released a web video on Thursday hitting McGinty for working for "notorious D.C. law firms" and "corporate special interests that receive millions in taxpayer benefits."
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The GOP points especially to McGinty’s time at NRG, the energy corporation she joined after serving as secretary for Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection. Three months before she left the job, she traveled to NRG’s headquarters in New Jersey for a meeting with the company’s board and CEO. Two months after she left state government, McGinty joined the same board. She stayed there until 2013, eventually earning more than $1 million in stock and cash payments. During her tenure on the board, the company expanded its investments in natural gas and wind and solar energy, something McGinty has said she encouraged.
But in December, long-time NRG CEO David Crane stepped down after the company’s share price dropped nearly sixty percent in a single year. The Wall Street Journal attributed his resignation, in part, to "investor unhappiness over his investments in renewable energy." Three months earlier, the company had spun off its solar power division.
NRG employees contributed just more than $19,000 to her failed 2014 gubernatorial run and, so far, $2,750 to her bid for Senate. And while McGinty has touted herself in the past as a "job-creating environmentalist," Republicans argue NRG’s experience shows that’s an inherent contradiction.
"Katie McGinty might brag about being a job creator on the campaign trail, but her role at one of the nation’s largest utility companies left a much different legacy," NRSC spokeswoman Alleigh Marre said. "NRG saw stock prices plummet and their CEO resign amid investor unhappiness with the investments McGinty championed."
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Meanwhile, McGinty also faces pressure from the other side of the aisle.
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"Katie McGinty calls herself an environmentalist, but she used her government post to help the coal industry, then left to make millions working with the same polluters," Fetterman spokeswoman Leslie Wertheimer said, referring to a permit McGinty approved for a coal plant whose owners later donated to her campaign. "She needs to come clean about where her money’s been coming from."
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